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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.”