Saw an amazing film in Perth last week made by a fascinating Aussie director, Kim Farrant. Besides being the daughter Primal Scream therapist and cellular consciousness pioneer Graham Farrant, Kim is a fellow cult enthusiast and has made an emotional, lovingly soul-impaling doc-o about, how can I say it, the various psycho-physio-sexual barriers that prevent people from accepting love. It’s called “Naked On The Inside” and at the Revelation Film Festival screening there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It premiers August 7th on Showtime at 10pm ET. Seriously, this film will move you like a Reverend Al Green Sunday sermon.

Here’s the website: http://www.magicreal.com.au/nakedontheinside/

*Confused by the heading? A “doc-o” is what they call documentaries in Australia and I applaud them for the streamline innovation. A “Yobbo” is apparently the Australian version of a WWF Fan and I used it here only because I am a total Fezzik.**

**Fezzik is the rhyme-addicted giant in Princess Bride and you should be deeply ashamed of yourself if you didn’t know that.

Tuesday, July 31 at Mezzanine
Doors open at 7
Free drinks

Join us as the San Francisco Film Society’s 360 Film Club presents Wholphin. We will be screening a selection of films from the latest issue of Wholphin. The doors open at 7pm and the 90-minute program starts at 7:30pm. The screening will include a documentary about a heavy metal band of Scottish pre-teens trying to rebel again their overly-supportive parents and a world that thinks they’re cute; an excerpt from a terrifying documentary that follows Steve Kurtz, an artist and professor, whose artwork has led to FBI charges of bioterrorism; a film that features real-life couple Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard in roles that Gyllenhaal has described as “pretty horrible, to be honest. [Peter] was playing a big jerk and it was hard for me to be around him all day long;” as well as an Academy Award nominated short and a mind-melting look at Las Vegas. Stick around after the screening and visit the displays of disturbing bacteriaphage, strange creatures from the deep and drunk bees.

If you’d like to reserve a ticket, please email info@sf360.org with WHOLPHIN in the subject and your name/affiliation in the body. Or just show up! Tickets are $5 if you reserve ahead of time and $8 at the door.

Mezzanine
444 Jesse St. (between Mission, Market, 5th and 6th)
San Francisco, CA
$5, Free Gin

Unseen? Yep. Films? Pretty sure. Totally freakin’ awesome? I’d put a dime down on it! Venture, scouts:

Cabinetic Presents:
Further Treasures from the Cabinet of Curiosities
(1927-2007, approx. 85min., 16mm & digital video)
Wednesday, July 25th, 7:30pm
$8 Regular / $6 Students, Seniors & YBCA members

Join curator Jonathan Marlow as he ventures back from the basement of the Cabinetic archives with another stack of little-seen classics. For one night only, he’ll share these amazing discoveries with the thrillseekers of San Francisco. Expect rarities and other assorted oddities from Stephen & Timothy Quay, Ladislas Starevitch, Jan Svankmajer, Jiri Barta, Tezuka Osamu and other renowned filmmakers

Brent Hoff, leader, strongman, weakboy, is in Australia sharing our delicacies with the Revelation Film Festival. He telegraphs:

What’s worse than 18 hours on a plane sitting in front of a hacking old lady with smelly feet? Having the first thing you see upon disembarking that tuberculosis incubator be Dr. Phil’s pharisaical face staring down at you from the Goddamn airport TV. I don’t know who should apologize to whom, me for our nation’s distasteful invasion of their airwaves, or them for celebrating America’s most shameful example of hypocritical paternalism. Well one of them anyway… Anyway, since then things have been pure filth. That means good in Perthian. Ivan the Perthian told me so.

Ivan does not call himself a Perthian, but he does have VHS footage of a vintage AC/DC concert where Angus spins in circles on the ground during a solo and hates it when people talk about Perth as being the “most isolated city in the world.” Ivan works at the Revelation Film Festival in Perth Australia where Wholphin is premiering films this week. It’s gonna be filthy.

Here’s the schedule:

Shorts Program 1
Rev Club at The Bakery/Artrage Complex - Friday 13 July 7:30pm

Wholphin Program II - intro/Q&A by Brent Hoff
Luna Leederville - Sunday 15 July 5pm

Wholphin Program III – intro/Q&A by Brent Hoff
Luna on SX - Monday 16 July 9pm

In the beginning, branding was a substitute for human interaction: the containers had cartoon representations of the people who used to sell those items directly. That way, you wouldn’t feel as bad when you broke the heart of the real freaky green leaf-man who sold you vegetables at the farmer’s market.

Once that was a comfortable betrayal, brands became less attached to their actual product/producers. Increasing the ubiquity of your brand was the only way to run a business for most of the 80s and 90s. It’s often said that branding began to die at some point in the mid to late 90s, but watching advertising today, you’d never know it. Starburst, Skittles, Burger King, Pepsi, and more have given up not only on actually describing their product but also on making you associate their brand with positive feelings.

Where does this all lead? Well, I submit Meredith Scardino and Dave Hill’s Another Spec Ad as a damn good guess.

After several years (timecube time) of deliberation, the Giraffe Drawing Contest comes to a close. I didn’t want to shame my comrade Emily, but there is no denying the sweet, juicy glory of the winner: Jason Polan’s response giraffe. The thing is freakin’ life sized, people.

Honorable mentions, however, go to the following, who will also receive prizes to be determined:

Josh Lagle

Nicole Miazgowicz

Do not feel so terrible for the people who did not win, because they, too, get a prize! Communism? Possibly. Anti-climactic denouement for such an epic event? Probably. Totally sweet, anyway? YES. Everyone else will get an original giraffe drawing from the prince himself: Jason Polan!

For those who missed out, we do have a home version of our game available: draw a giraffe, send it to yourself in the mail and grade it (be honest, please).

Courtesy of the Museum of Natural History.

Issue 4 represents the new, la moderne, the never-before. To commemorate, I am sending us back to the olden days: a few weeks ago. But I only head back so I can then go forward again: bringing everyone up to speed with our latest doings. And today it’s rather “Knife” out there.

Being centered in California, Wholphin is good friends with several grizzly bears. Brent Hoff, our fearless leader, is actually three eighths grizzly bear (one of his grandfathers and one of his grandmothers’ mother, for you unauthorized biographers and Wikipedia contributors).

Before California was a united state, it was an independent nation for all of twenty-five days. Our president was was William B. Ide, a pioneer and carpenter. Caleb Greenwood, a fur trader, had directed him to California. Ironic, since Ide would later befriend many grizzly bears during his struggle for power. Greenwood was a true mountain man who completed the very first wagon journey to California. Yes, the SAME California about which he told William Ide. Coincidence or chance? Some of the less popular members of the California Historical Society still argue about it to this day.

Fur trading was a volatile industry in those days, before all the glitz and glamour. The French had a monopoly of the Canadian fur trade, but they only wanted action to happen colony-side. Two Frenchmen learned from the Cree that the best fur country was northwest of Lake Superior, the area near what is now called Hudson’s Bay. They found financing in a group of investors from Boston and got incorporated by King Charles II, becoming “The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay,” an abbreviation of the longer, less memorable and altogether more unsightly name, “Hudson’s Bay Company”.

In June 1870, Hudson’s Bay Company transferred ownership of the Northwest Territories over to the Canadian Government. Later, in 2006, in Sachs Harbour, Northwest Territories, the world’s first documented grizzly-polar bear hybrid was discovered (and promptly shot, of course!). Grizzly-polars were then promoted from cryptids to fully-fledged hybrid animals, much like our very own Wholphin! Encyclopedia Pictura lists cryptozoology as an interest in the liner notes to their film, a music video for the song “Knife” by… wait for it… Grizzly Bear. Verily, fate has whistled its song and the stars have aligned to bring you, dear viewer, this film.