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From Black Belt Jones to the Wu-Tang to an Afro Samurai
If you've caught yourself flipping past Spike TV this January, you may have seen an anime'd samurai with the voice of someone familiar (but not someone you would expect voicing the old Japanese warriors). Yup, thats the Ezekiel 25:17 spouting Samuel L. Jackson voicing Takashi Okazaki's Afro Samurai.
This aint the first bushido brutha though. In fact, cinematic history has had quite their share of them, from Jim Kelly's Black Belt Jones (who also starred as Williams in Enter the Dragon) to "Bruce Leroy" in the Last Dragon (yeah, you know the one with the Shogun of Harlem) to Forrest Whitaker's Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai and of course, the Wu-Tang Clan's shaolin fixations. The Wu's producer, the RZA, who also scored Ghost Dog and partially scored Kill Bill, also scores this one.
And...did you know that Samuel L's immortal Ezekiel speech in Pulp Fiction was inspired by Sonny Chiba (who also played Hattori Hanzo, the sword maker in Kill Bill) who used to make similar religiously threatening sermons before getting medieval on his helpless victim's ass.
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