Wow! Two posts in one week?!? Yes - it's true and it must be for a good reason and this surely is.

A few weeks back I was chilling at home with some knitting and Netflix (sometimes I lead a very old lady-like life... and love it!) when I scrolled upon a documentary that I hadn't heard of before called Project Wild Thing. The brief description about a guy declaring himself the "Marketing Director for Nature" caught my attention so I settled in to check it out.

The filmmaker, David Bond, wanted to figure out how to get kids (and their parents!) to detach from the screens  and get outside in to nature. Fueled by the fact that his own children were turning in to "glassy-eyed zombies" he seeked out experts in a wide variety of fields searching for creative ways to make nature a bigger draw to children's attention than the screens.

I found this film to be extraordinary, quite funny and made me really think about my own screen addictions. I work at a desk Monday to Friday, own an iPhone and iPad and am plugged in to plenty of social media outlets, watching YouTube's funniest cats or Jimmy Fallon and can be found consistently scrolling through Instragram feeds. There has to be a better balance but it's certainly not as easy as a quick swipe of the screen to make changes in one's life... especially in the winter months of Calgary!

As it turns out the filmmaker/director, David Bond, and producer, Ashley Jones, are in Calgary this week for the Marda Loop Justice Film Festival!! They will be hosting the official Canadian premiere of Project Wild Thing on Saturday, November 22 at the River Park Church Auditorium at 3:25pm with a post-film panel discussion. If you can make it please do - this film really made me think and I truly believe it will change your thoughts on our screen addictions and what they are doing to us - especially the next generation. Otherwise, check it out the trailer below or watch it on Netflix. You will not be disappointed. 

I cannot recommend this documentary enough! Whether you have children or not this is worth the watch. Everybody can learn something about themselves and the world of conveniences we now find ourselves in here in the Western world.

Last week, a co-worker sent around a link to a documentary trailer that really piqued my interest. This multi-award winning film is a story of a group of relatively ordinary men led by an extraordinary and somewhat mysterious leader on a snowmobiling expedition from Minnesota to Moscow in the dark days of the Cold War. Now, what isn't there to love about that?!?

Obviously, the trailer hooked me and after telling my roomies about it we decided to give it a go and downloaded it from the Wild Bill's Run film website. There is a minimum $6 donation to download/stream the film and it is totally worth it.

At this time of terrible news and unrest coming from the Ukraine and Russia it was really interesting to watch this film where, in 1972, a bunch of guys left the comforts of their homes and families to go on an adventure and prove the point that people are people no matter where they are from... as long as the politicians just get out of the way - or in this case avoided. Perhaps they weren't the most prepared or had all their paperwork in order but that was the beside the point. They were out there tackling terrain with gear not really suitable for the elements and in locations in the high Arctic where few humans of any lineage have ever explored. For this point alone they all deserve a solid high-five or at least a good beer cheers.

The final mystery of what happened Wild Bill Cooper may forever be left unsolved but his story and the legacy of this expedition will never be forgotten.