Lunch in Translation -

by tvff

Lunch in Translation: I Just Called to Shill for Coffee

This one is tough for me. Making fun of Stevie Wonder gives me no pleasure. He’s a certifiable genius and was the most vital and important factor in music during the first half of the 1970s. Talking Book and Innervisions represent the fifth greatest back-to-back album combination of the rock & roll era. But I must do what I must do.

Here’s the man who wrote “Superstition” and “Living for the City”… in a terrible Japanese commercial for coffee. Excuse me while I pound my head against the wall.

Full critique, and the final verdict on how big a sell-out this ad is…after the jump.

Lunch in Translation: Sell It Like Beckham

Mega-stars don’t demean themselves in crappy third-rate commercials, right? Well, they do in Japan! Just like Bill Murray pimping for whiskey in that movie where he has a borderline inappropriate relationship with Scarlett Johansson, major celebrities seem to have no qualms about trading on their fame for even the most mundane products…as long as it’s in the Land of the Rising Sun. And so we bring you Lunch in Translation, a recurring series in which we showcase what food products the world’s biggest celebs are hawking in Japan.

David Beckham is about as famous as you get. He’s known worldwide as a soccer legend. He married a Spice Girl and became half of one of the most paparazzi’d couples around. And then he singlehandedly put professional soccer on the map here in the States. OK, well, maybe that last one didn’t work out so well. But just because he wasn’t able to convince Americans that watching a scoreless soccer match was exciting doesn’t mean he’s not a dynamic pitchman, and so we present Becks shilling for a chocolate company called Meiji.

Full critique, and the final verdict on how big a sell-out this ad is…after the jump.