Sion Sono	...	(Director)
Sion Sono	...	(Writer)
Sen Fujimaru	...	Yasuko Yabuki
Mala Morgan	...	Katako
Tomoko Fujita	...	Kiriko
Marina Kozawa	...	Hirona Matsumoto
Tarô Suwa	...	Tadashi Kobayashi
Mitsuru Fukikoshi	...
Matsuri Kohira	...	Kiriko
Canon Nawata	...	Hirona Matsumoto
Jun Toba	...
Tetsu Watanabe	...
Tatsuhiro Yamaoka	...	Tadashi Kobayashi
Masaya Suzuki	...	Cinematographer
Sion Sono	...	Editor

Comments: It's both sad and beautiful this is the last thing we got from Sono. Even though it became available before Prisoners I'm sure he just whipped this out after Prisoners had wrapped

This is roots stuff. This is Sono writing and editing his film. That is to say, this is Sono shooting from the hip. His editing is funny

When you think of Sono's life/career, the ending to this has to make you cry. Yasuko and Kiriko walk out into the middle of much (real) pedestrian traffic and start shouting

Freedom is disappearing from our world!
Everyone, rise up!
Are you happy being faceless extras?
Face up to the reality of life as an extra!
Face your reality
Fight against your reality

That isn't profound. It's kid's stuff. It's the kind of street poet super8 guerilla shit Sono did when he was a kid, complete with (real) cops shutting him down

Beautiful. He rediscovered how to make a film like a child. Painters get kudos for that. Sono is first and foremost a painter

There are more continuity errors in this than you can count. It's just a bunch of scenes of people screaming, blended together and then edited to tell a simple story of a ragtag assortment of people auditioning for a film (and a critique the film industry)

We get about 50 characters, ninety percent young women/girls who Sono gathered up from an actors workshop he was mentoring and invited them to come scream for him. I found it joyful to watch almost every one of them try to act, to drift in and out of speaking part/not speaking part

The last act drives so far off into the weeds it's silly and absurd. Beautifully silly and absurd

This film changed/enlightened the way I view extras in a film. I think that's why Sono pushed it out before Prisoners. He wanted to school us a bit on how to watch Prisoners. If you ever watch Prisoners, watch the extras

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This is a first for Sono: a full on absurdist comedy. He's absurd a lot, sometimes funny, but not beat after beat like this. His other funny films are also about what he does for a living. Film maker street poet. He's edited the two funniest ones.

There's a ten hour version of this out there for sure. Probably a
Last Wish or two. He could turn ten of these characters into a two hour movie in three days each. Sono's gift is that he has never miscast an actor. And then he maximizes the room.

This is an improvised shoutfest with an intricate construction. When Sono drives the end of the film into the weeds it becomes so meta it might as well have been dreamed up by the janitor.

Red Post would make a great companion to Intimacies. A film about what it's about. But I won't go there.

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If I hadn't rated this 5 stars the first time I watched it I'd bump it up a star.

It was more fun watching this after the revelations about many of the first time actors here appearing in Sono's latest Prisoners of the Ghostland. And it's going to be more fun re-watching Prisoners after just re-watching this film

Everyone sees Sono through their own Sono-colored glasses. For me, Be Sure to Share remains one of Sono's most revealing and important films: Sono has Daddy-issues, and it exposes why all the middle-aged and older male characters in his films suck balls. Especially when POWER (or the lust for it) vectors into the equation

Watching Red Post is like floating on a smiley cloud all the way through except for the "king of extras" (or whatever he is) character and the movie mogul dude who wants a couple of his starlets to get roles in Kobayashi's film. They are repulsive characters, like a big zit on a beautiful face

Red Post is so heartwarming because it's content is so close to Sono's heart. It's not bonkers Sono, nor bloody Sono. It's poetic Sono where the medium is the message and vice versa. It's pedestrian pop-psychology stuff delivered with sincerity

My Sono-colored glasses are always looking for characters and actors who reveal and react to their environment. It's inexplicable and weird that Sono somehow makes this happen by inducing his actors to over-act most of the time. But that's the key: safety is no fun; riding the razor's edge of failure is where it's at. Devotion is a must. And this film is about being an actor. So ... there ya go. Somehow :)

It's also a heads up on how to view Prisoners: Forget the Wizard, focus on the munchkins

Summary: A genius film director, Tadashi Kobayashi holds an audition for his new film project. Several actors and actresses answer the open call, but most will only be cast as extras. Can the film come to a completion without accident?