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Reviews
Gilmore Girls: Bon Voyage (2007)
Boy Voyage
I found this episode to be everything it needed to be. While some things were a bit rushed in the last several episodes - Loreali goes from marriage to Christopher to single mom status in a hurray - it all seems to fit.
We all wanted to see Luke and Loreali resolve their relationship. They do. Loreali holds back tears upon learning Luke did all the work in throwing a going away party for Rory. She immediately walks over to his place and thanks him. Luke stumbles out the right words about "just wanting to see you happy." Under her breath, you barely hear Loreali say one word - "Luke". And the rest is history for all time.
It doesn't take much imagination to know that all ends well in this little make believe town for Rory, Loreali and Luke, especially the last two. Thank you Amy, cast and crew too, for a splendid run of acting and written dialogue from start to finish!
Gilmore Girls: Unto the Breach (2007)
Unto the Breach
I have to smile, really, that in this day and age, anyone would attempt to introduce feminism into this wonderful episode on behalf of Rory Gilmore. Her emergence as an adult graduating from Yale is well written and portrayed in this episode. And her treatment of Logan is also in keeping with her personality. I found no difficulty in accepting her choices in this show regarding Logan, her future as a Yale graduate and her feelings about her friends and family.
As for Luke and Lorelai, their impending relationship, post marriage with Christopher, is, yes, somewhat rushed. It seems things were left hanging in order to get to the next episode, the final episode. Yet together, this show and the last one (Bon Voyage) do justice to what we all wanted to see - a final resolution between these two.
And we get it! Now you have to use some imagination, which is difficult for some who want to see everything spelled out. But I feel secure in knowing that they very likely did marry and live happily ever after. Both were faced with the loss every parent faces - their kids growing up and moving on. Given the alternatives of future life in their small town, it is only natural that they likely gravitated towards each other. Everything written to date, in my humble opinion, points towards such an ending, even though we never get to see it.
Imagination is a wonderful thing and so thank you Amy for leaving us to dream a bit about the futures of the characters in Gilmore Girls. Special thank you to Lauren Graham for her upbeat and often alluring portrayal of the single mom. How in the world Luke took so long to avoid colliding with this beautiful woman is beyond me?
Mondo Topless (1966)
Russ Meyer blast from the past
Although Russ Meyer made this movie in a hurry to make some fast money, he later came to see it for what it is - a classic sendup of the go-go and striptease girls of the swingin' 60's! The movie is sparse, even by Russ Meyer standards - just a music soundtrack accompanied by an announcer who introduces the "girls"!
But the "girls" are something else! Most of them are California based professional strippers of the era who jumped at the chance to get in front of a movie camera and do their go-go bad thing. All of them are eye catching, but one stands out, literally, from the rest.
Russ was actually ready to run this film through his paces, featuring the already well known Lorna Maitland, when he got a phone call from a great "procurer" friend, one Andy Anderson. He told Russ that he had a major discovery in front of him at a strip club in downtown Los Angeles (San Francisco has been incorrectly reported) and that Russ should "get his body down to a certain club a.s.a.p." in order to be the first to shoot her. Andy said "I'll hold the dogs off until you get here!"
Russ complied, went to the club and together, he and Andy went to the dressing room of one Vivian Cournoyer. She had apparently just begun dancing at the club and was new to the art of striptease and the area, temporarily staying with a friend. Identifying himself, Russ asked Ms. Cournoyer to display the goods whereupon Russ got to see, according to him, "the greatest set of breasts I've ever seen or filmed", all the more remarkable on a petite 112 pound body!
Realizing he had to act quickly in order to be the first to get this buxotic lady on film, Russ Meyer drove with her to the desert early the next morning and spent the entire day shooting stills and film of the woman he called Darlene Grey for his ode to the go-go era, MONDO TOPLESS. Darlene Grey went on to a short-lived career in magazines such as Arv Miller's FLING, posing as Candy Morrison, Vivian Moyer and Angela Carter.
Then, as Russ tells it, she just disappeared from sight after less than a year of posing. Nevertheless, Russ Meyer still claims that MONDO TOPLESS has been one of his best selling videos over the years "simply because of Ms. Grey's great heaving chest".
If for no other reason, enjoy this movie for the "girls", but especially for the extended "desert boogie au go go" done by Darlene Grey near the beginning. No less a film critic than Roger Ebert felt compelled to specifically comment on the voluptuous Ms. Grey in MONDO TOPLESS. Seeing her cavort, topless in the desert, holding a tiny AM transistor radio in one hand is an experience never to be forgotten!