Ekman Face Suite

A Must-Have Primer for Learning to Recognize Facial Expressions. Ekman is a leading authority on the study of the facial expressions and their relation to emotion, and this book is a methodical and thorough (for the layperson, at least) introduction to the field, with special focus on recognizing what he calls the six basic universally expressed emotions: happiness, fear, anger, surprise, disgust/contempt, and sadness. Ekman provides clear, well-detailed instructions for recognizing each of these emotions, and the book includes plenty of photos to illustrate the different facial contortions of each emotion. The only complaint I would have is that I had to do a lot of page flipping back and forth to read Ekman's remarks and subsequently refer to the relevant picture. Perhaps a future edition could be better formatted to make it easier for the reader to view the expression alongside Ekman's comments.

Here at last, the Bergman film most of his fans don't have (and may have never seen it either, if they were not already adults by 1976). This drama about the nervous breakdown of a female psychiatrist, played by the great Liv Ullmann in an unforgettable performance, may not be one of the master's greatest achievements but it's a very interesting, harrowing movie experience. Never released on video on a big scale, and almost impossible to find (Amazon doesn't even lists this title, and ebay only offers a DVD-R copy of a TV-rip), Bergman himself may be responsible of this film's unavailability, since he wasn't very fond of it (see details). Golden Globe winner for Best Foreign Film and Oscar-nominated for Best Director and Best Actress.