Surfing Olympian Julian Wilson reveals existential struggle in brave new documentary!

A surfing movie so real, so authentic, you can almost taste the transparent viscous goo!

Less than one year ago and after a brave decade-long fight, Julian Wilson threw in the towel, sliced off his hair and joined the ranks of bald surfers which include the greatest of all time, Kelly Slater.

Reactions were mixed though Julian Wilson’s pivot to hard-edged multi-functional fashion with his brand Rivvia Projects marked a step forward for the former world number two.

Wilson followed Dane Reynolds/Craig Anderson and Luke Egan into the rag-trade, Reynolds and Ando with Former and Egan with Depactus, a brand that flew a little too close to the sun before the glue holding its wings melted and it was bought for a song by SurfStitch.

Only one year earlier, Julian Wilson had quit the tour he’d orbited since 2011. He was a rookie of the year, made Gabriel Medina cry when he beat him in Portugal in 2012, he beat Medina in the final of the Pipe Masters in 2014 and three years later beat Medina to win the 2017 Tahiti Pro.

In 2015, Julian Wilson bravely paddled towards Mick Fanning in his own existential battle with the second-greatest predator of all time, the Great White shark.

What a career, yes?

Now, and thanks to the French film and retail house Wasted Talent, we find Julian Wilson, long removed from the tour, but still with the same vitality that won our hearts all those years ago.

It’s so real, so authentic you can almost taste the transparent viscous goo!

Essential.


Reclusive John John Florence releases behind-the-scenes short featuring sexed-up bulldogs and latest “devastating throat punch to the World Surf League”

Climbing against all odds from poverty to a position of honour and privilege, the millionaire world champ has turned an original story into a Hemingway masterpiece.

This fourteen minute short from reclusive world champion surfer John John Florence is exciting, genuine and funny.

See French bulldogs sexing while their millionaire master John John gets his hair cut; watch as Jon Pyzel reveals the dark secret of a budget Australian airline and marvel as John delivers another devastating throat punch to the World Surf League when he curates his own, unsanctioned event in Brazil.

Climbing against all odds from poverty to a position of honour and privilege, the now thirty-one-year-old John John has been anointed with two world titles, turning a truly original life story into a Hemingway classic.

A comic tour de force.

Highly recommended.


New Filipe Toledo docuseries reveals controversial champ’s heartbreaking struggles prior to world title glory!

“There’s nothing left to prove to anyone,” he says.

The world’s best small-wave surfer, Filipe Toledo, who won his second consecutive world title under a sailboat sky in three-foot waves at Lower Trestles, is the star of a new docuseries with the wildly sexy title Peace & Power.

When Filipe surfs, the world stops He is only twenty-nine but his name is spoken around the world as often as Muhammad Ali. He is a polarising and controversial figure, all but unbeatable in three-foot waves, fragile in heavy waves over six.

“Filipe Toledo’s new series, takes you inside his quest for his second World Title and the Olympic dream,” we are told. “Picking up at the final events of the year at Rio de Janeiro and J-Bay, Filipe gives us insights into his new approach this season. The documentary style series meant to cover the ups and downs of his career, what’s working, what’s not and how he intends to reach the top and leave an even bigger legacy behind. It’s a deeper reveal of the emotions that coincide with Filipe’s competitive greatness that is refreshing to see and hear.”

An alternately tense, funny and heartrending toast to surfing’s world champion.

“There’s nothing left to prove to anyone,” he says.



Hawaii’s BIPOC “Queen of Crazy” Mason Ho films surfing’s greatest virtuoso Clay Marzo at Desert Point!

“He knows things I don’t know," says Kelly Slater. "He knows things that all the guys I’m surfing with don’t know.”

In this twelve-minute short, we find Mason Ho, with camera, recording the sorcery of Maui’s Clay Marzo at Desert Point on the island of Lombok in Indonesia.

Of Marzo, Slater says, “He knows things I don’t know. He knows things that all the guys I’m surfing with don’t know.”

Laird Hamilton, also from Maui, calls Marzo “an artist who can’t be pigeon-holed. He’s something all together different that should be cherished.”

It’s a penetrating glimpse into Marzos’s virtuosity and in stark contrast to Ho’s “shuck and jive” style of surfing, a whooshing flash that leaves spectators’ mouths flapping mutely.

Seven years ago, Marzo and his mama were stiffed for $400,000 by their crooked bookkeeper, who would serve three years for the crime.

Essential.


Rare free-surfing footage of Gabriel Medina tearing hell out of remote Australia alongside Mick Fanning and Mason Ho in “Kangs”

"It's the stroke flick of the year!"

The last time I’d interviewed Nick Pollet, famous for his his comedic collaborations with Swellian Lord Adam “Vaughan” Blakey, he was a few hours from a trip to Australia’s Great White-infested southern flank with Mick Fanning, Gabriel Medina and Mason Ho.

“I’ll swim and shoot but, fuck, real close to the other photographers,” the Byron Bay auteur had told me.

That movie, called The Kangs, a cutesy way of saying Kings and also ‘cause Medina wanted to see some kangaroos, has now been released. And, from the moment Medina first puts on his rubber gloves, submerges his hand in a jar of lube and rims…oh but don’t let me give too much away… it’s the stroke flick of the year.

Pollet says the highlight was triple world champ Medina, a rare bird whom you’ll rarely see on free surfing trips. He says his true character only emerges when the camera isn’t on him and, so, he employed his sound engineer musician pal Alain De Carne, who scored The Greatest Surf Movie in the Universe, to capture each forbidden utterance. It’s the shell we can’t pry our ear away from.

“He recorded the whole trip and me and Vaughan had to sift through the audio,” says Pollet although the price of art is to sometimes lick the stank fingers. “It was a bit punishing to be honest,” he says.

The trio, along with Pollet, De Carne, Mason’s filmer Rory Pringle, Mikey Corker and Stu Gibson, spent one week on the unnamed hunk of sand, driving mostly, but surfing here and there, giving Medina the opportunity to dazzle in righthand slabs.

“He blew me away. I was shooting footage in the water and it doesn’t do him justice,” says Pollet, “he so’s good out there it’s crazy.”

The movie exits your screen with a soon-to-be-classic tune Wide Open Land.

I define this as the sound of love.