Okay, admit you fell asleep or dozed off while watching...

[72teeth]

I fell asleep during Avatar, and everyone in the world likes Avatar, but i think Avatar was dumb. I'm torn on whether i should give it another shot or not.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

When I was in high school, I got a hand-me-down TV/VCR from my brother that had a sleep timer and it automatically rewound the tape once it hit the end.  This was probably one of my biggest steps in watching movies because while I'd often put movies on and fall asleep to them (thus ending up in the most bizarre dreams). I began watching foreign films more because I'd get VHS's from the library and I found that the foreign ones had subtitles.  Since I couldn't play the movies too loud, being in an old, quiet house, I began renting more and more silent and/or foreign films that I could more easily follow. 

Since then, I've found sleep to be a most amazing way to engage in a movie, especially if you somehow manage to be half-asleep the whole duration of the film, you experience it in an utmost lucid way.

[ono]

Yeah, it kind of blurs the lines between fantasy and reality, almost putting you into the movie as a result.

[The Perineum Falcon]

This thread reminded me of an article in The Believer a year or two ago, in their Film Issue. I tried to find it online, and tho you can only read an excerpt without purchasing the issue online (and I don't have it with me to transcribe), much of the sentiment is shared with Walrus, in that it's not neccessarily a bad thing:

THE VARIETIES OF CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE IV: On Sleeping Through Movies
by Jessica Winter

Falling asleep at the movies may seem like a passive-aggressive act against the work in question: the response as lack-of-response, the dozer's head jerking forward and back in nodding rejection of the cinema product. Under the right circumstances, though, it's an indicator that the sleepwatcher is deeply, palpably inside a well-maintained dream machine—she's falling into a movie, not out of it. Straight off a plane with my time zones jumbled, I conked out for almost the entire run-time of Carl Theodor Dreyer's witch-hunting tragedy Day of Wrath, jolting awake just in time to see old woman Marte tied to the stake and toppling into the flames. I watched the whole thing on DVD later, but that screaming shock-cut remains the eidetic, definitive experience of the film. David Lynch's Inland Empire was similarly concussive: I gasped awake to an extreme close-up of strobe-spangled Laura Dern, her smear of red mouth pulled into a rictus of disgusted terror. She and I enacted the quintessential morning-after nightmare: waking up next to a total stranger.

************

To be sure, I've conked out in my fair share of movies; in a variety of moods, settings and levels of inebriation. When I went to Paris for study, I fell asleep in almost every movie I saw there (Parisian movie-seats are commmmmfortable, and the temperatures inside were the perfect escape from a city embroiled in a heat wave [the trees were dying!]) This includes Batman Begins, which I've never been able to stay conscious for since, and probably never will. Other than that, there was some huge avant-garde blahblahblah going on, but who needs to stay awake for all of that?? Plus classic Hollywood westerns that i was FORCED to sit thru, tho it made it a bit more difficult to write an analysis of them.....

W. was another more recent pic that I just could not....

[JG]

when i was three my godmother took me to see aladdin. i fell asleep right after the magic carpet ride. every time i watched it on vhs afterwards, i stopped the movie at that point, thinking it was over. i remember the shock one day when my nana told me that the movie wasn't over, and i had to keep watching as jafar messed everything up. i had a hard time understanding why the movie didn't just end before things got bad for aladdin.

[socketlevel]

I watched Network twice and fell asleep 3 times.  

you should be shot...

...though i dig your honesty.

[Pedro]

Nacho Libre
The Bridge

[Ostrich Riding Cowboy]

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (I was six at the time)
Enemy of the State (thirteen or fourteen)

[Fernando]

i had a hard time understanding why the movie didn't just end before things got bad for aladdin.

hahaha, kids are awesome.


my list

@ home:

- with every bergman
- with every godard
- just this week, rented criterion's bigger than life and saw it in three parts
- 2001, like five years ago intended to finally watch it and failed, i havent tried again since

@ the theater

- gangs of ny
- sleepers (oh the irony!)
- re-release of empire strikes back, went with a friend and both fell asleep, we woke up in the middle of it and walked out

[Jeremy Blackman]

This thread reminded me of an article in The Believer a year or two ago, in their Film Issue.

Off-topic:

The Believer is pretty amazing.

[Ravi]

THE VARIETIES OF CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE IV: On Sleeping Through Movies
by Jessica Winter

Falling asleep at the movies may seem like a passive-aggressive act against the work in question: the response as lack-of-response, the dozer's head jerking forward and back in nodding rejection of the cinema product. Under the right circumstances, though, it's an indicator that the sleepwatcher is deeply, palpably inside a well-maintained dream machine—she's falling into a movie, not out of it. Straight off a plane with my time zones jumbled, I conked out for almost the entire run-time of Carl Theodor Dreyer's witch-hunting tragedy Day of Wrath, jolting awake just in time to see old woman Marte tied to the stake and toppling into the flames. I watched the whole thing on DVD later, but that screaming shock-cut remains the eidetic, definitive experience of the film. David Lynch's Inland Empire was similarly concussive: I gasped awake to an extreme close-up of strobe-spangled Laura Dern, her smear of red mouth pulled into a rictus of disgusted terror. She and I enacted the quintessential morning-after nightmare: waking up next to a total stranger.

There are certain movies I actually like to watch when its 2am and I'm a little tired.  It enhances the absurd, nightmarish qualities.  After Hours, Bringing out the Dead, and Requiem for a Dream come to mind.  Its like I'm the only person in the world and I'm trapped with the movie.  I saw Eraserhead at a midnight screening.  I should give Inland Empire a go when I'm in this state.  Its a strange, almost masochistic, way to watch a movie.  Does anyone else ever do this?

[Alexandro]

i had a hard time understanding why the movie didn't just end before things got bad for aladdin.

hahaha, kids are awesome.


my list

@ home:

- with every bergman
- with every godard
- just this week, rented criterion's bigger than life and saw it in three parts
- 2001, like five years ago intended to finally watch it and failed, i havent tried again since

@ the theater

- gangs of ny
- sleepers (oh the irony!)
- re-release of empire strikes back, went with a friend and both fell asleep, we woke up in the middle of it and walked out

MY GOD, have you heard about coffee?

[Fernando]

I don't like coffee. 

[Stefen]

Fell asleep last night while watching 'Trouble Every Day' by Claire Denis with Vince Gallo.

I was tired and it got boring sometimes. Vampires and cannibalism is awesome, but this film wasn't going anywhere. The worst was that apparently it was on repeat, so I fell asleep around 1am, but the movie kept playing, so I would wake up every couple hours and it would still be on and I decided it was the longest movie ever.

[modage]

Fell asleep last night while watching 'Trouble Every Day' by Claire Denis with Vince Gallo.

I was tired and it got boring sometimes. Vampires and cannibalism is awesome, but this film wasn't going anywhere. The worst was that apparently it was on repeat, so I fell asleep around 1am, but the movie kept playing, so I would wake up every couple hours and it would still be on and I decided it was the longest movie ever.

Haha, I almost watched that last month.  Glad I stayed away(ke).