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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 18, 2016)
18 // COASTWEEKEND.COM Paddle for National Park Service centennial ASTORIA — 100 Paddles for 100 Years is an opportunity for people to join in a hu- man-powered water journey in honor of the centennial of the National Park Service. The public is invited to travel by water into the Lew- is and Clark National His- torical Park, similar to how members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition travelled during their winter in the local region in 1805-06. On the evening of Thurs- day, Aug. 25, experienced canoers and kayakers will meet at the Astoria Recre- ation Center (the former Astoria Yacht Club site located near the Old Youngs Bay Bridge) for a 5:30 p.m. launch and group paddle across Youngs Bay into the Lewis and Clark River. Less experienced folks are encouraged to meet at Netul Landing at 5:30 p.m. and head downstream on the Lewis and Clark River. The two groups plan to meet at the park’s Otter Point wetland restoration site, and together they will paddle to Netul Landing where they will be served birthday cake. Participants need to bring their own kayak, canoe, paddleboard or any non-mo- torized watercraft and need to wear a U.S. Coast Guard approved personal loatation FILM REVIEW ‘Pete’s Dragon’ (pleasantly) stays earthbound By JAKE COYLE AP FILM WRITER NEW YORK (AP) — After an exhausting summer buffet of set pieces, superheroes and whatever s-word you might use for “Suicide Squad,” the gentle “Pete’s Dragon” is a welcome palate cleanser. Where other summer movies are chest-thumping, it’s quiet; where others are brashly cynical, it’s sweetly sincere; where others are lacking in giant cuddly dragons, “Pete’s Dragon” has one. Few may remember the 1977 Disney original, in which a young boy’s best friend was a bubbly dragon invisible to others. As part of Disney’s continuing effort to remake its animated classics in live-action, “Pete’s Drag- on” has been conidently reborn as an earnest tale of green-winged wonder. David Lowery, a veteran of the independent ilm world and the director of the lyrical crime dra- ma “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” inherits a far bigger ilm. But his “Pete’s Dragon” still maintains the homespun feel of an Amer- ican fable. Spielberg-light, you might call it. The ilm begins, in the “Bambi” tradition, in parental tragedy. Pete’s family is driving through a remote Paciic Northwest forest with Pete nestled in the backseat of the station wagon, reading a children’s book about a dog named El- liot. A deer sprints out and, in poetic slow-motion, the gravity of the car’s interior is upended. The car lips off the road and Pete staggers from the crash. Flashing forward six years, Pete (Oakes Fegley) is a wild 10-year-old orphan living in the woods alone except for his magical com- panion, the dragon Elliot. As far as CGI creatures go, Elliot is an irresistible one. Furry as a fairway, he’s like an enormous emerald-green puppy. Far from the “Game of Thrones” dragon variety, he’s more adept at chasing his own tail than breathing ire. He’s also the subject of local folklore, mostly as told by Robert Redford’s wood-carving storyteller. But it’s his forest ranger daughter Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) that irst encounters Elliot and ulti- mately leads to the dragon’s discovery. Grace coaxes Elliot back into society and into the fold of her family. She has a daughter, Natalie (Oona Laurence) and lumber mill-running husband Jack (Wes Bentley). It’s the push by a logging company — where Jack’s brother, Gavin (Karl Urban) is a gun-totting lumberjack — into the forest that simultaneously begins lushing out Pete and Elliot from their home in the trees. The lush forest (New Zealand subbing for North America) reigns over “Pete’s Dragon,” a tale scored with soft bluegrass and exuding an environment-friendly love for the beautiful and exotic splendors of nature. When competing interests come for Elliot, they are really ighting for the soul of the forest. There are Spielbergian gestures here of magic and family and faith, perhaps better orchestrated than Spielberg’s own recent try at a Disney ilm, “The BFG.” But it’s missing a spark, a sense of danger and maybe a little humor. The lean simplicity of “Pete’s Dragon” is its great- est attribute and its weak- ness. It doesn’t quite achieve liftoff until the ilm’s inal moments. But it does at last catch light, inally soaring beyond its humble folksi- ness. “Pete’s Dragon,” a Walt Disney Co. release, is rated PG for “action, peril and brief language.” Running time: 103 minutes. Three stars out of four. device. If you’d like to join the fun, call the park at 503- 861-4425. The National Park Service was founded on Aug. 25, 1916. Admission to all National Park Service sites is free Aug. 25 to 28 in honor of the National Park Service Centennial. Regular park hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day through Labor Day. 100 Paddles for 100 Years SUBMITTED PHOTO Paddle to Netul Landing for birthday cake on Aug. 25. is sponsored by the Lewis & Clark National Park Associ- ation, which supports park education and interpretative activities at Lewis and Clark National Historical Park. For more information, check out www.nps.gov/lewi Family ilms span generations for actress By LINDSEY BAHR AP FILM WRITER LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bryce Dallas Howard remembers as a child watching the 1977 ilm “Pete’s Dragon” on repeat until the VHS was worn out. She even hung onto her old “Pete’s Dragon” book to read to her two children. So when she heard there was a script for a new take on the fantas- tical story of a little boy and his dragon friend, she actively sought it out. What started as sentimen- tal curiosity led to a starring role in Disney’s new version of “Pete’s Dragon.” Howard plays the park ranger who stumbles upon a mysterious boy and becomes his protector as they unearth the mystery of the dragon. The ilm released Aug. 12. “This movie is so sen- timental for me because it reminded me of a lot of those movies I loved growing up that had real gravitas to them,” Howard said. As the progeny of two generations of entertainers, including her mother, actress and producer Cheryl Howard, and father, actor, director and producer Ron Howard, it’s no surprise that movies have been a backdrop in Howard’s life for as long as she can remember. Those ilms hold a special spot for Howard as reminders of her family legacy, her emo- tional development and how she’s passing that on to her own children. Howard shares a few of those stories: A fairy tale legacy Howard’s grandparents, Rance Howard and the late Jean Speegle Howard, met as teenagers doing a touring children’s production in Okla- homa of classic fairy tales. They even married on the tour dressed in their costumes, with her grandmother as Snow White and her grandfa- ther as a huntsman. “I come from a family who has a very romantic notion of fairy tales,” Howard said. Her grandmother imparted a love of classic Disney ani- mated ilms through repeated viewings and trips to Disne- yland. A talented seamstress, she would also make cos- tumes from her favorites. Life lessons In the ilms she loved growing up and in this new interpretation of “Pete’s Drag- on,” Howard sees the value in family ilms that don’t shy away from darkness. “The reality of life is that trauma exists and you can move forward from trauma. You can heal from trauma,” Howard said. “That’s the power of Disney. It’s not just there to entertain; it’s there to enlighten. I know they provid- ed me with a lot of growth ... Children are going to create monsters. If you try to shelter a child completely from all dangers, they’re going to be ill-equipped for the world. These movies are kind of giv- ing children the tools to deal with those monsters so that they can learn to face them in their own way.” Passing the torch While many parents can’t wait to inundate their children with the ilms they loved from their youths, Howard and her husband, actor Seth Gabel, have a patience and an overriding theory. “We mess this up all the time, but, if we can, we want to space them out so that the movies come at a time in their life when they’re asking themselves similar questions,” Howard said. “My son is 9 ½, he’s going into fourth grade, he’s really coming into this place where there is inde- pendence and mischief and friendships independent from the family, so we just showed him ‘Aladdin.”’ For her 4 ½ year old daughter, it’s still all about “Frozen.” “In delaying it, it doesn’t just become something that they watched when they were younger. It’s something that they really look forward to and understand and hopefully can see the big picture.”
