NETFLIX REVIEW: Jacqueline Novak, Utopia, Mr Organ and True Detective 4
Jacqueline Novak – Get on your knees – 6 Stars
Novak’s monologue on the philosophical, psychological and art history geek guide to becoming a blow job queen is the funniest, cleverest most immaculately polished comedic performance of the year so far.
Sure, it’s only February, but her delivery, the choice of words, the dynamic nature of her on stage movement – it’s just fucking extraordinary.
The laughs per minute are machine gun fellatio quick. It’s an incredible performance and you realise you are watching comedic genius.
I’ve never been so impressed from a. first stand up performance, this is remarkable.
Forget Barbie, this deserves an Oscar nomination!
Utopia – Season 5 – 5 Stars
Oh Jesus, this entire series including the new Season 5 is quite possibly the funniest political satire on Netflix right now.
The Australians manage to make satire that is so painfully clever, I am forever jealous.
The Australians make Utopia and we get Tom Sainsbury.
I feel cheated, yet believe we deserve that somehow.
Utopia follows an Australian infrastructure department that constantly finds itself buffeted by the naked self interest of the Government, the idiocy of Politicians, the ignorance of talkback radio and the ever changing internal culture of woke bureaucrats.
There are moments of pure joy and hilarity as almost every facet of public service gets sent up and laughed at.
It’s very clever, very real and probably the best insight into how infrastructure gets built in a modern society than anything else.
Gliding On meets The Office meets House of Cards.
Mr Organ – 1 star
Before I rip this awful shit to pieces, let me be clear: I have been a real David Farrier fan in the past. His Dark Tourist stuff, his Tickled and The Cryptid Factor have all been great work and I would have put me in the fan category, but his appalling character assassination of Sean Plunkett and the wet woke stuff at The Spinoff have all made me queasy and increasingly he’s used his platform to go on woke crusades and cancel culture lynchings.
In those woke social media lynchings you can at least accept that there is some ultra liberal identity politics value that is the motivation, unfortunately for his latest offering, Mister Organ, you can’t even give his work that pretence of higher motives because it’s not that.
It’s a vicious attack and public profiling of a suburban arsehole who David keeps losing to which sees David using the most graceless and unprofessional journalism to justify the whole documentary.
How did the NZ Film Commission give him $750 000 for this?
Is the NZ Film Commission actually saying the stunts and crimes against journalism committed by David in this documentary are the highest standards of journalism that they want to associate with?
Look at me getting ahead of myself!
As you can see, I think this is a disgraceful documentary, an appalling use of $750 000 and raises serious questions of the NZ Film Commission.
Let me rewind and start from the beginning.
I went with Damien Grant to the movies to review the documentary, he reviews it in his Sunday column today alongside this review from me and an anonymous review from someone who was in the scene that David Farrier explores.
First up, I knew Brent who David focuses on in the Documentary. I lived above his Bookshop in Grey Lynn, I was around for the Tuesday Night Poetry events and while I never talked to Organ, he was around that scene.
Organ was part of a subculture of Queens and gay life that was hurt and damaged around the edges in the mid 90s in Grey Lynn Auckland. Brent, my landlord, was part of that world and tried to give it some purpose and a home with his poetry nights.
The insinuation that Organ was responsible for Brent’s suicide is a grotesque over reach.
I knew Brent, I was aware of the dispute between him and Organ over that bloody model boat and while there is little doubt in my opinion that Organ is a hypnotic, overwhelming and intense arsehole, Brent was an exceptionally gentle and passive person who could feel intimidated by a gust of wind.
To make Brent’s suicide the gotcha smoking gun moment by Farrier is not the craft of journalism you expect from a Taxpayer funded documentary, it is a crass and sad conclusion to a documentary that increasingly becomes personal and where David, as far as I am concerned, let himself down horribly.
The documentary starts interestingly enough about the crazy mad buggers at Bashford Antiques who would clamp cars outside their arsehole antique dealership in Ponsonby. The rigid enforcement and glee the private owners felt when clamping anyone stupid enough to park there became the stuff of urban legend.
Of course Bashord Antiques could be as big a prick as they liked because it was their property.
Farrier did a hilarious series on The Spinoff about these lunatics and starts focusing on the clamper, who is Mister Organ. But when Mister Organ sues him for stealing billboards, the whole tone of the documentary starts turning as David gets more and more pissed off that someone he clearly detests is constantly besting him.
This draws Farrier into Organ’s world and his past and rather than simply shrugging it off and going about his next project, David keeps digging and the more he digs the less he finds, but the extreme nature of how far Farrier is prepared to go to get Organ leads to some truly disturbing journalism.
David doorstops family members of Organ for Christ’s sakes! He turns up at their door at night with cameras and tape running without their permission!
The only time you doorstop someone as a journalist is to catch a politician who has been involved in a scandal and is refusing interviews, a priest accused of child abuse who is refusing interviews and corrupt police who are refusing interviews, you don’t doorstop people for your personal documentary where you are attempting to slag their family member!
How is that level of gutter journalism acceptable for a documentary that ultimately is little more than a $750 000 vendetta?
I’m not defending Organ or his broken damaged world, I’m just saying you can’t justify 3 quarters of a million in taxpayer money on using your platform to shit on someone just because your ego can’t stand being bested by someone you think is beneath you!
This is such a shitty, nasty and needless documentary that I honestly can’t believe the positive reviews I’ve read!
At no point does anyone pull David aside and say, ‘Mate, there’s no story here, if we keep going down this path we are the bullies now’.
Watching David make himself out to be the victim in all of this is truly woke level snowflake trigger gas lighting at its finest.
Mr Organ may be a an unpleasant wanker, he may be a manipulative Rasputin, but it really does say something that the highlights of the documentary are when he’s giving David shit for his terrible journalism.
This has the distinct desperate feel of someone who was given a lot of money for a documentary that doesn’t have any real purpose and spends 90 minutes trying to justify itself.
“How the fuck did this cost $750 000 when The Working Group can’t get a fucking red cent” I said to Damien as we left the empty movie theatre.
How indeed.
True Detective 4 Ep 3 – 5 Stars
True Detective 1 is the greatest TV ever made!
Its incredible cinematography, script, music choice and jaw dropping performances from Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughy combined for a season of on the edge of your seat viewing that took the crime genre to a completely different level.
I re-watch the entire season every 2 months.
True Detective 2 was not as bad as everyone says.
It could never be better than the original because True Detective 1 reset the paradigm, so it was always going to be a lesser god.
True Detective 3 wa a fucking disaster. What the fuck was that all about then? Old men forget things?
FFS.
So I was very negative going into Season 4 after the total waste off time Season 3 was.
I am glad I did.
This is Jodie Foster at her best with a script that grips and a haunting Billie Eilish title track.
It’s beautiful, meaningful and terrifying all at the same time.
Looping back to the Satanic cults from Season 1 is a clever script move that hooks the original fans back in.
It is a brilliant new chapter truly worthy of the first season.
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Keep the sheeple entertained and they won’t cause too much trouble would be my summary of the situation. As long as people don’t find out what is really going on those pulling the strings think that their various enterprises can keep going.