ryuganji: film news from japan

Waiting on a rain-drenched platform to catch the train to work this morning, my attention was drawn through the doors of an open carriage to a poster ad for English conversation school ECC featuring Kitano Takeshi. As mentioned on this blog before the Beat isn’t averse to a bit of commercial endorsement, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is partially subsidising what’ll hopefully be the final instalment of his solipsistic trilogy, but if I’m not mistaken this is the first time he’s appeared in a campaign for one of the ubiquitous eikaiwa chains. Although Kitano doesn’t have a much of a reputation as a multilinguist, there was that one time when he was accepting the Golden Lion for “Hana-Bi” at the Venice Film Festival and apparently said in English something along the lines of “Let’s form another Italo-Japanese alliance and attack other countries!”

Inevitably one of the TV commercials (directed by Gu Su-yeon of “The Barbeque Movie: Bulkogi” and “Guuzen nimo Saiaku na Shonen”) has made it to YouTube (embedded below), but you can watch the whole series at the ECC website here. Click on the “CMを見る” button to watch the ads, or “CMメイキングを見る” to see a making-of video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGEZk8sg3bk