Product Details

• Actors: Pierre Golstein, Polly Matzinger, Martin Raff, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Robert Horvitz
• Directors: Peter Friedman (II), Jean-François Brunet
• Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: FIRST RUN FEATURES
• DVD Release Date: June 21, 2005
• Run Time: 130 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0008FXT78
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #106,499 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Death By Design/The Life and Times of Life and Times" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Directors Peter Friedman and Jean-François Brunet have created the 'first rock and roll' biology movie... that is simple without being simplistic, it titillates your curiosity and is full of poetry drama and playful pedagogy. --La Marseillaise

Product Description

Winner of 10 international Awards, DEATH BY DESIGN is a guided tour into the invisible world of cells, told through a collage of metaphors and interviews with cellular biologists. State-of-the-art microcinematography is playfully intercut with parallel images from life at the human scale: a hundred lighted violins, imploding skyscrapers, Busby Berkeley musicals, Harold Lloyd antics and more. Using the same imaginative interplay of classic films, animation and research,THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LIFE AND TIMES tells the complex story of how we age and also shows how scientists hope to alter the genes that determine how long we live.

See all Editorial Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Consciousness-shifting!, April 13, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Death By Design [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I saw this on World Link TV one night when nothing else was on. I was completely captivated, enchanted, blown away. Words cannot describe this film or the way it shifted/stretched my consciousness. I felt like a child being playfully tossed into the air of a greater understanding of (and trust in) how the entire intelligent universe unfolds itself. A complete joy! I've got to find this on DVD....

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As thought provoking as Koyaanisqatsi, only with words., November 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Death By Design [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This documentary will test your understanding of corporeal existence in the way major psychotropics used to in the sixties, only without the hangover. It is a misleading title, though once you watch it you'll get it. The "death by design" is also referred to as "programmed cell death" and it is a detailed explanation and deconstruction of cellular resurrection and rebirth on orders of billions of times per second; what makes us "us." It is how cells communicate with each other and survive for the good of the whole. Move. Divide. Stay where you are. Become something else. Kill. Commit suicide. Die. It will astound you and give you a perspective of life that damn near reaches divine inspiration. Just get passed the graduate film school opening credit sequence and sit back with jaw dropped. You won't regret it and you will demand that your friends watch it, too. Especially if you're in the right head.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Survivor" at the cellular level, August 25, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Death By Design [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I remember vividly seeing this film on TV. I was in Europe on business, jet-lagged, unable to sleep at 2AM. So I flipped on the TV and this came on. The title and opening few minutes made me almost change the channel, but I'm sure glad I stayed with it, because it just engrosses you. Seeing this film and learning about aptosis ("programmed cell death") have been very important/helpful to me, in hindsight.

I recall a quote in a book, something like "zen is what happens after you've spent enough time thinking about death", or words to that effect.