Russell Crowe is going to be kung fu fighting…with a hip-hop star! Hip-hop artist and actor RZA tells me that Crowe has signed on to costar with him in The Man With the Iron Fist, a kung fu flick the Wu-Tang Clan founder is also directing. RZA will play a weapons-making village blacksmith in feudal China—and as for Crowe, RZA doesn’t want to say too much. “I won’t spoil it for you, but Russell’s gonna be the baddest man alive,” he told me yesterday at the VMAs. “That man is in fighting shape. That man will knock you out.” The Man With the Iron Fist (no relation to the Marvel Comic superhero Iron Fist) starts shooting in Shanghai in December. “It’s nerve-wracking,” RZA said of directing Crowe. “He’s a master of the craft. I’m quite sure that I may learn something from him.” Crowe and RZA worked together three years ago in Ridley Scott’s American Gangster. They even recorded a song together, but Gangster producers decided not to include it on the movie’s soundtrack. The Wu-Tang Clan founder began developing the project about five years ago with the help of Quentin Tarantino and director/actor Eli Roth, the latter now a cowriter and coproducer of the flick. Universal reportedly green lighted Iron Fist in May with a $20 million budget. Words by: Mark Malin
Tokyo’s electric taxi experiment uses switchable batteries . “I’m not sure if I like this idea” – Funk Flex
Yoshihiko Takahashi chuckles politely when asked if he is weary of having the same conversation with passengers every day as he shuttles them around Tokyo in his white and blue all-electric taxi. How often do you have to recharge? How far can you go? Does this car really have no emissions? Those are just some of the queries he has grown used to during his 90-day trial use of three zero-emission taxis, and a designated battery-switch station in the first undertaking of its kind in the world.
VW to name Browning to head U.S. operations. “This is a good move because VW definitely needs good help” – Funk Flex
Volkswagen will name former General Motors and Ford manager Jonathan Browning to head its U.S. operations, a company source said today. Browning would succeed Stefan Jacoby, who last month became CEO of Volvo Cars.
