The Assassinated. Leon Davidovich Trotsky

Leon Trotsky's mug shot from Russian secret police files (1900)



August 20, 1940, Mexico City - NKVD (USSR secret police) agent Ramón Mercader attacked the exiled Trotsky with an ice pick to the back of his head. The blow did not kill him, and Trotsky is said to have spit on, and fought with, Mercader until his bodyguards appeared. Trotsky died the next day from server brain damage.

Screening Log. Big Fish

Big Fish (Tim Burton) (2003)



-third or fourth viewing...watched in my Fiction Into Film class. A charming and interesting film whose sentimentality becomes a bit too much for me.

Reading Log. Big Fish

Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions (Daniel Wallace) (1998)



-By this time, the Morgans had noticed their little girl was missing and had come running in the direction of the dog’s terrible howl. They arrived in time to see the dog lunge once more, this time barely missing my father’s neck, his warm moist breath spraying past. This was the dog’s fatal mistake: leaving his bare underside expose as he jumped so high into the air, Edward Bloom was able to trust his hand trough the dog’s hair and skin and into the body proper, clutching and finally ripping out his massive beating heart. My father held the girl so close, nestled into his wide shoulder, that she was spared this last gory scene. As the dog fell heavy to the ground my father dropped the heart there also, and handed the girl to her parents, and continued his walk into the night.

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wikipedia [link]
Powell's Books [link] [link]

Portrait. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk at the Library of Çankaya, July 16, 1929.

Screening Log. Punch-Drunk Love

Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson) (2002)



Second viewing. Needed to see this again after There Will Be Blood...and again I was not disappointed.