Jack Nicholson: Movie Top 10

by Mikita Brottman (Editor)

Jack Nicholson - charming, charismatic and demonic. Having sustained one of the most successful careers in Hollywood, he is still receiving critical acclaim (Oscar for 'As Good As It Gets') years after his early Oscar-nomination as the drunken, liberal lawyer in Easy Rider. With a prolific filmography ranging from convict McMurphy in Milos Forman's seminal One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, to the psychotic axe-killer Jack Torrance in Kubrick's The Shining, and sleazy private eye Jake Gittes in Polanski's Chinatown, Nicholson's ability to blend box-office success with cult status is unparalleled. Jack Movie Top Tens takes ten of his most engaging or offbeat films and analyses them through accessible, in-depth essays by some of the best cutting-edge film writers around. Visually charged with striking b/w shots throughout, the result is both an incisive overview of Nicholson's impressive career, and an anthology of films by some of the leading cult directors of recent years such as Stanley Kubrick, Tim Burton, Roman Polanski, Mike Nichols, Antonio Antonini, and Milos Forman.

161 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2000

About the author

Mikita Brottman (born 30 October 1966) is a British scholar, psychoanalyst, author and cultural critic known for her psychological readings of the dark and pathological elements of contemporary culture. She received a D.Phil in English Language and Literature from Oxford University, was a Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, and was Chair of the program in Engaged Humanities with an emphasis in Depth Psychology at the Pacifica Graduate Institute from 2008 to 2010. She currently teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Brottman's articles and case studies have appeared in Film Quarterly, The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, New Literary History, and American Imago. She has written influentially on horror films, critical theory, reading, psychoanalysis, and the work of the American folklorist, Gershon Legman.

Brottman also writes for mainstream and counterculture journals and magazines. Her work has appeared in such diverse venues as The Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Bad Subjects, The Fortean Times, Headpress, and Popmatters, where her column, "Sub Rosa", ran from January 2007 to July 2009. Her essays have also appeared in a number of books and anthologies.

She is the author of the cult film books Meat is Murder and Hollywood Hex, as well as books on psychoanalysis, critical theory and contemporary popular culture. Her most recent book, The Solitary Vice: Against Reading (Counterpoint, 2008) was selected as one of the Best Books of 2008 by Publishers Weekly, who said: "Sharp, whimsical and impassioned, Brottman's look at the pleasures and perils of compulsive reading is itself compulsively readable and will connect with any book lover."

Brottman's partner is the film critic David Sterritt.

(from Wikipedia)