'A Streetcar Named Desire' & 'From Here To Eternity'

Around my junior year of college, me and the girl was overwhelmingly hooked up with at the time used to frequent Hastings.

I don't know how many Hastings there are in this country nor do I believe that everyone's had the pleasure.

Hastings are typically found (in Texas, anyways) in mid-sized college towns that don't have much else to do on random weeknights (or weekends) or a place to buy records or books.

Hastings has books, magazines, CDs, DVDs (sell or rent), video games and all the other junk you'll find in any Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Sam Goody and Blockbuster.

Around my junior year, Hastings (like others) started the stark transition from VHS and DVD to primarily DVD. So, they expanded. And they dumped all their old VHS tapes onto about 12 rows all hodgepodged together in no real rhyme or reason.

You could rent a VHS tape for 25 cents.

Being broke, we rented VHS tape after VHS tape. Initially just an attempt to burn time became an attempt to watch all of the "classics" of filmdom on a dying medium at the cheapest of cheap rates. Even bad movies are worth 25 cents.

We did not get very far in our mission. We knocked out about four or five films. Two of the five were A Streetcar Named Desire and From Here to Eternity.

Streetcar is pretty brilliant. It was before Marlon Brando got big (figuratively, literally), so he's still very raw, but very good. And extremely good looking. Ridiculously good looking. I'm sure they put him in ripped T-shirts, wife beaters and, often, sweaty and shirtless totally on accident.

Brando, of course, got second billing to Vivian Leigh, who was apparently as neurotic in real life as she was in the film. But you can't find a movie poster or DVD cover that doesn't have Brando alone.

Also, it features the wonderful Karl Malden, who died almost a year ago. A great character actor willing to take on a co-starring role and nail it. Malden is the initial inductee to the Thomas Mitchell Players, guys or gals that embraced their secondary role in filmdom.

Watching From Here ... you learn that its based in Hawaii and you think, "Aw shit, is this going to end on Dec. 8, 1941?"

Sure enough. It does. Thanks for the pick-me-up. Kill off Frank Sinatra and Ernest Borgnine then bring on Pearl Harbor.