This one is about the face. It's just one way to do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xls25e08sSg

 

Also, if you can find it these days, there's a DVD set by an artist named Tareq Mirza that walks you step by step through the creation of an anatomical human from a cube through to the complete finished model. It's done in Maya but the techniques are the same regardless of what modeling software you use. His Youtube channel with at least some of the videos from the dvd is here: 

http://www.youtube.com/user/esotareq/videos

There's also Gnomon online (http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/) that has several videos on humanoid modeling, and just about every other aspect of CG all done by industry pros. 

For more dvds there's eat3d.com - huge collection, pretty much an extention of the gnomon library (not the same company but some of the instructors are).

I'd suggest building a collection of instructional videos on how professionals do it as you'll get more consistant info than you will from asking in a forum. Not that there isn't good info from forums and discussions like this, its just that - as this thread has quickly demonstrated - everyone has their own opinions. So I list these video resources because as far as I can tell it's the most accurate in terms of how hollywood does it. If you were to go to school for this, you'd be given pretty much the same info as what you'll get from these sources, regardless of the school. 

In the end, there's no way to say exactly this is how you do it, that works every time, because topology is always determined by the shape of the character you're building, and what you need that character to do. How well it does all that is determined by the artist (or artists) skill and attention to detail. 

Poser figures are not the same as game models and they're not the same as movie models. They're their own creature, mostly because they're expected to be so versatile and end-user-with-zero-experience friendly. There are some aspects that just don't translate to a poser figure very well. Not because Poser isn't capable, but because it would make things so complicated most poser users wouldn't want to touch it. 

In film there are usually multiple copies of the same character, each with its own topology that functions with its own custom rig, built based on what that model needs to be doing in that particular scene. If it's a close-up shot showing facial animations, that's almost always a separate rig from the full body shots in the next sequence. The full body will have some facial rigging, but only what it needs at a distance. 

 

~Shane