Movie: Vai viegly būt jaunam? (Is It Easy To Be Young?)

The final movie of the required movies for class. I think this was definitely my favorite, probably because it took place in Latvia and was a documentary, not a cinematic reenactment of historic events. What I really liked about this film was that it showed the struggles that the Latvian youths were going through in relation to their situation as members of a state in the USSR and how that effected their lives, but also a lot of the struggles that they went through were universal to being a young person, which made the subjects of the documentary easy to relate to.

wikipedia

Book count: 6
Movie count: 3
Other media: 1

Book: The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011

I've read all of the Best American Nonrequired Reading books, and I think of the last couple years, this has been the best.  Sometimes the collection is filled with a variety of qualities of stories, but in this one, I actually read through all of the stories, which hasn't been the case for the last few years.

Goodreads

Book count: 6
Movie count: 3
Other media: 1

Book: A Concise History of the Baltic States by Adrejs Plakans

This was of course for the same class as those other movies that I watched earlier. I haven't read very many history books, but I thought this one was pretty good. It kept my attention throughout the entire span of history, which was quite a feat, because I'm don't consider myself too interested in history.


Goodreads

Book count: 5
Movie count: 3
Other media: 1

Book: I Saw You...: Comics Inspired by Real Life Missed Connections

I thought this book was going to be comics all drawn by the listed author, whose comics I've read before and enjoyed. However, it was drawn by lots of different artists, which I did end up enjoying. As a result of this, I realized that I have very specific tastes in art styles for comics. But I the stories and interpretations of them made up for the many art styles that I apparently don't enjoy.

Goodreads

Book count: 4

Movie: Utterly Alone

I also had to watch this for class, and I definitely would not have watched it otherwise. I found the film really hard to follow, which made it hard to pay attention which made my confusion worse. The short documentary at the beginning was definitely the best part; if the whole movie had been like that, I would have liked it better.

imdb

Movie count: 3

Movie: Names Engraved In Marble

I had to watch this film for a class, otherwise I probably wouldn't have watched it. It was interesting to see how Estonians view or want to view their war for independence, but I think that there were some parts of the movie that were added clearly only to make a better storyline, so it was hard to tell what was a reflection of truth and what was purely cinematic.

imdb

Movie count: 2

Movie: 50/50

I really liked this movie. I didn't have too high of hopes because I haven't really head much about it, but I was pleasantly surprised. Two things, though, that almost completely ruined this movie though.
First, the film is supposed to be set in Seattle. Would it have killed them to actually get some footage from Seattle? Apparently it was really shot in Vancouver, which is sort of similar I guess, but really.
Secondly, I didn't like the ending. Was it not enough of a happy ending that he didn't die? Was it really necessary to show him dating his former therapist? That weirded me out. A lot.

imdb

Movie count: 1