Television commercials are strange beasts, and often seem to have been designed by people on day release and thats just the ones from our own cultures. If youve ever been abroad and seen TV advertisements in other countries, theres always a little disconnect between what youre used to and what youre watching, quite apart from any issues with a language barrier: the composition, music and editing feel wrong, slightly off kilter. And then theres Japanese television. The Japanese have a cheerfully inventive and hyperactive approach to television commercials that mirrors their unique approach to pop culture in general, all crash-edits, reaction shots and mugging to camera. What people dont realise is that this isnt just because Japan is a kerrrrazzzzy place and the Japanese, all a bunch of bizarreniks. No, in Japan weird is a selling point, a marketing tool, and one that rivals or even exceeds sexy for the massive Japanese marketing and advertising budget. Thats right: Japanese TV advertisers have astronomical amounts to spend, compared with their Western counterparts. Thats why so many serious, rich, seriously rich Hollywood stars have decamped to Tokyo over the years to shoot commercials for Japanese products, for the Japanese audience: theres a metric crapton of lovely, lovely money in it, and before the age of the Internet, no one aside from the Japanese audience would ever see it something which, sadly for their reputations, simply isnt true anymore. Now, if you think that the cultural disconnect is massive for Western TV viewers watching Japanese telly, wait until you watch Western movie megastars appearing in Japanese commercials. These are some of my favourites of all time, and remember: once seen, they cannot be unseen.
12. George Clooney - Kirin Green Label Beer
The Cloonfather has taken acting in television commercials as a fundamental part of his career, and rarely appears embarrassed or flustered by slumming it in the adverts. Hes also able to handily take the mickey out of himself, something he made a virtue of playing a wonderful variety of handsome, bumbling, gurning fools in the films hes made with the Coen brothers. Here, hes the Clooney most of us know from the flicks: El Cloonola, unflappable, urbane, a walking throwback to the era of stars like Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant. And in the perfect summer sunshine, hes painting green the roof of a small white house set in a beautiful green meadow, and visited by a small CGI bird that leaves green footprints on his clean white shirt. Why Clooney is there is a mystery for the ages. Why hes painting the house, likewise. I like to think that he wants it to be invisible from the air so that he can use it as a lair of some description.