Summer Movie Magic

Started a warm, humid, and (finally) rainy morning with Hugo. This sweet fantasy tale from director Martin Scorsese is one of two movies about film history nominated for an Oscar earlier this year. (The other was the ultimate winner, The Artist.) Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is a young boy who lives in a huge rail station in Paris in the mid-20s. An orphan, he works literally behind the scenes, winding the stations clocks everyday and dodging the crippled cop (Sasha Baron Cohen) who works security. He steals food from the vendors, while spending his spare time repairing the robot his late father (Jude Law) had worked on. He's caught taking parts from the toy maker Georges (Ben Kingsley). As it turns out, both Georges and his goddaughter Isabelle (Chloe Mortez) have more than one surprise in store, including the key to the robot...and to Georges' pioneering past in early science fiction film.

It does start slow, and the story is rather sluggish at times, but this is generally a thoughtful and dazzling fable about the importance of fantasy and preserving the past. It's too slow and unusual to be for everybody (Cohen is far from his usual hijinks), but if you have any interest in the time period or subject matter, it's absolutely worth a look.

It was just sprinkling when I finally headed out to the Haddon Township Library for my first volunteer session of the week. Newton River Park was empty. It wasn't hot, but it was damp and very, very, cut-the-air-with-a-knife humid. I dodged a couple of boys on bikes and a team of workers cutting down old tree limbs.

There wasn't really much to do at Haddon Township when I arrived. There were few kids' books and DVDs to return, and they already had another volunteer doing them. I organized the kids' DVDs and pulled foreign and kids' titles from the adult shelves. I took out another set of Scooby Doo shorts (these revolving around exotic and safari animals), a set from the Sean the Sheep spin-off TimmyTime, and two major hits from last year, Super 8 and Midnight In Paris.

Made a quick stop at Super Fresh next. I wanted to make my own Lime Mousse Pie. They had sales on graham cracker crusts and Cool Whip. The mousse mixes weren't on sale, but they had the Light Vanilla flavor, which the Acme doesn't.

Stopped at the Westmont Bagel Shop for a quick lunch. I had a very warm pizza bagel that was heavy with cheese and a bottle of water. It was around 12:30, and there were quite a few people enjoying lunch with me and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on ABC, including an older couple and a pair of high school students.

I didn't like the look of the weather. The rain had stopped, but it remained cloudy and humid. I spent the rest of the afternoon at home. I took advantage of the cooler weather and made Fudgy Brownies from a low-fat recipe that uses egg whites and canola oil, replaced the granulated sugar with fruit concentrate, and lowered the brown sugar content. Yum! It came out delicious, very dark and fudge-like.

Ran the Scooby Doo cartoons while working on the brownies. Though all three of these What's New, Scooby Doo? episodes involved exotic beasts, only one, "Safari, So Good" was actually set during a safari. "Homeward Hound" actually had Scooby saving a group of puppies from a menacing cat monster at a dog show, while "New Mexico, Old Monster" had the group fleeing from a huge bird creature that's somehow involved in a government conspiracy.

After the brownies were out of the oven, I put on Summer Rental while doing a quick scrub on the bathroom. This John Candy vehicle from 1985 starts out in Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation territory and ends up as a variation on Captain Ron. Candy is an air traffic controller from Atlanta who is feeling serious burnout. His boss insists he go on vacation and sends him to a little resort town in Florida. The rental house is a mess and in a noisy area, the beach is a major party spot, and the town is run by an insufferable snob (Richard Crenna) who wins the local regatta every year. Candy discovers that the snob owns their beach house and will turn them out...if they can win the money to pay the rent for the rest of their vacation. Candy turns to a crusty local sailor (Rip Torn) and his multicultural sea dogs, to teach him and his family the art of sailing...and that the family who works together, wins together.

A really cute summer comedy. Despite the PG-13 rating, other than some innuendo, mild bad language, and skimpy bikinis, this is actually pretty family-friendly. Not necessary unless you're a John Candy fan, but enjoyable enough if you run into it on cable or for rental.

Though this is the beginning of the month, work wasn't that bad. It's the middle of the week, and many people are probably on vacation. It was mildly busy when I came in, pin-drop quiet when I left.