| View Larger Image | The Human Face | DVDStarring: John Cleese, David Attenborough, Candice Bergen, Pierce Brosnan, Mali Finn
Directed By: David Stewart, James Erskine
Also With: John Cleese (Writer), David Stewart (Producer), James Erskine (Producer), Michael J. Mosley (Producer), Nancy Lavin (Producer), Nicholas Rossiter (Producer)
| List Price: | $29.98 | | Price: | $16.99 | | You Save: | $12.99 (43%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | DVD | | Rating: |  | | Run Time: | 200 minutes | | Format: | Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC | | Studio: | BBC Warner | | Number of Discs: | 2 | | Aspect Ratio: | 1.78:1 | | Release Date: | August 28, 2001 | | Sales Rank: | 15,304th |
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FEATURES | - A four-part BBC series examining the science behind facial beauty, expression, and fame in lighthearted fashion.Running Time: 200 min. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES Rating: NR Age: 794051157225 UPC: 794051157225 Manufacturer No: E1572
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
THIS 4 PART BBC SERIES EXAMINES THE SCIENCE BEHIND FACIAL BEAUTY, EXPRESSION, AND FAME IN AN ENTERTAINING FASHION. |
Amazon.com
Anthropology, psychology, cultural history, and biology provide key filters in this breezy but substantial exploration of the focal impact of the face. Produced by the BBC as a four-hour series and broadcast in the U.S. on the Learning Channel, The Human Face benefits from host, narrator, and cowriter John Cleese's signature blend of erudition, enthusiasm, and wit. Along the way, Cleese presents information on the evolution of human facial features, the face's role in sexuality (including the biological significance of "bedroom eyes"), communication through facial expressions, and the face's essential role in defining identity. Ideals of physical beauty, the reasons why visual development and artistic expression focus on the face, and the nature of celebrity are examined, as are medical anomalies such as Mobius syndrome, a condition that eliminates the ability to smile. The presenter gets strategic help from guest Elizabeth Hurley, who gamely lampoons her own celebrated beauty in various sketches, and Cleese's fellow Monty Python alumnus Michael Palin, who pops up in Python-esque skits during the program's fourth segment on fame. Comments from scientific sources are augmented by thoughtful interviews with Pierce Brosnan and Candice Bergen, who convincingly address the downside of being drop-dead gorgeous. --Sam Sutherland |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 20 reviews)
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Worth EveryPenny! by Mrs. Entity (Connecticut)  5 Stars
July 08, 2009
This documentary interweaves science, psychology, sociology, and humor to create a very accessible, informative, and entertaining program. Are we "hard-wired" to a particular standard of beauty? How do facial expressions get us through everyday life? How can you tell if someone is lying? What parts of the brain control facial recognition and emotional reaction? What happens if one of those parts is damaged? The answers are here, and a whole lot more fascinating stuff! I sat down to watch episode 1 one afternoon, and wound up watching the whole thing.
John Cleese is an engaging, entertaining host. Some humor, but he's clearly on an adventure and is happy to have the viewer along for the ride.
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John Cleese introduces the human face by Sara F. Thomason  4 Stars
November 19, 2008
A great series of hour-long episodes with host John Cleese introducing the human expression. It has some humor, but it is also factual with interviews with professionals and sad stories. This video is valuable for an artist to learn more about the reasons behind expression, but it is also a great video to watch for the sake of learning or information. A great tool for the classroom.
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Very good, but before choose... by Antonio Ney C. Braga (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) 4 Stars
September 17, 2008
The product, this dvd, claims some type of "decode" software, if you want to see this in your PC, or a kind of domestic dvd machine capable of to read it format, from Englad, I suppose.
I live in Brazil, and now I had already solved the problem in PC, but I'm still in search of another kind of domestic dvd machine to substitute that I have.
In spite of all, I' glad with my purchase. To buy more I have to solve this problems.
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Fun at first - last episode boring by VoteForTheLeastWorst (Somewhere, US United States)  3 Stars
September 10, 2007
The first 3 episodes are pretty interesting and use a combination of animation and strange setups to make the points vivid and entertaining. There were demonstrations of the principles using things I had never seen before such as Indian laughter groups and the 1:1.618 golden ratio (ok I saw this in PI, but didn't know really how it connected to perfect beauty, and I had never studied otherwise).
(SPOILER - next paragraph)
In one part, a white woman who was raped by a black man helps to wrongly convict an innocent man for ELEVEN years and the worst thing about how she feels is EMBARRASSED? Wow! If I was responsible for something like that I would be devastated at taking away a part of someone's life. They used this to show how we can easily mistake faces and how we tend to lump other races into a prototype. The point was a good point, but a better example of a more regretful person would have been more poignant.
The last episode "Fame" was a big drag. There were some fun moments such as Cleese visiting his usual produce store, but a large part of the show was taken up by who this casting director was going pick. Where was the science for this episode? It was more like an expose in why some people are addicted to celebrities, and a reality TV contest. Ugh.
I would say watch it for the first 3 episodes and have fun with it, but don't expect this entire show to be a documentary into how our faces work, and don't expect it to be scientific.
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entertaining and educational by Matthew the Raven (Wisconsin) 4 Stars
August 29, 2007
I love good documentaries, and I really enjoyed this series. There was so much good and interesting information about the expression of emotions, beauty, fame, and a variety of other topics, and John Cleese brought a lot of humor into it that made it easier and more enjoyable to absorb. To anyone who likes psychology, sociology, or John Cleese, I would recommend this DVD highly.
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SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions From Facial Expressions
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This reprint edition of Ekman and Friesen's breakthrough research on the facial expression of emotion uses scores of photographs showing emotions of surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness, and sadness. The authors of UNMASKING THE FACE explain how to identify these basic emotions correctly and how to tell when people try to mask, simulate, or neutralize them. It features several practical exercises that help actors, teachers, salesmen, counselors, nurses, law-enforcement personnel and...
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| What the Face Reveals: Basic and Applied Studies of Spontaneous Expression Using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) (Series in Affective Science)
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While we have known for centuries that facial expressions can reveal what people are thinking and feeling, it is only recently that the face has been studied scientifically for what it can tell us about internal states, social behavior, and psychopathology. Today's widely available, sophisticated measuring systems have allowed us to conduct a wealth of new research on facial behavior that has contributed enormously to our understanding of the relationship between facial expression and human...
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| Emotions Revealed, Second Edition: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life
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“A tour de force. If you read this book, you’ll never look at other people in quite the same way again.”—Malcolm Gladwell Renowned psychologist Paul Ekman explains the roots of our emotions—anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and happiness—and shows how they cascade across our faces, providing clear signals to those who can identify the clues. As featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller Blink, Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System offers intense training in recognizing feelings in...
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| The Human Face
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The Human Face tells the fascinating story of our most familiar features. We embark on an intriguing and unique journey of self-discovery, exploring the evolutionary, social, and psychological aspects of the face. Why do we have a face? There are six billion human faces and yet we instantly recognize faces that we know. The face is the key to identity, both for ourselves and others. How is it that this small part of us can be such an immediate and effective way to define who we are?...
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