No more teachers! No more books! No more teachers' dirty looks! When the teacher rings the bell, drop your books and run like hell!

It's the anthem of June, as classes wind down and summer begins. When there's two full months free of school, it's easy to forget the looming dark cloud that is September ... unless you're a lucky college grad (or a high school student not heading off to further your education).

There's a definite twist that happens over those four years, as school falls into a memory. High school grad movies are full of exacerbated partying, getting your last hoorahs, and last chances at childhood love. After college, however, the tone changes a little bit. There's work, the towering pressures from the adults around you, and the bad choices you make in the name of lust and love. The two films for this double feature are almost 30 years apart, but both are classics, known for their stars, music, and adult angst. I give you: The Graduate and Reality Bites.

After this weekend hits, I wouldn't be surprised if Forgetting Sarah Marshall becomes the quintessential break-up movie. But even if it doesn't, the comedy will go down in the record books for being that romcom about the really heart-broken and pissed off dude whose story lathered ad spaces everywhere with lovely messages like: "You Suck Sarah Marshall," and made Sarah Marshalls across the US wonder what they did to deserve that.

But there's still a ton of other flicks out there that deal with break-ups -- way too many to even begin to name. But while each of them has heartbreak on their sleeve, they all tackle the issue in different ways. In honor of Peter Bretter's broken heart, here are seven other men who have had their hearts broken on-screen, all for the sake of comedy. Check these out and then weigh in with your favorites. Annie Hall? The Break-Up? The Philadelphia Story? Say Anything? Swingers?

The Nasty Letter -- Overnight Delivery

Wyatt Tripps (Paul Rudd) didn't want much in his happy co-ed experience, just Kimberly Jasney (Christine Taylor)... and one more thing: sex. Imagine his surprise when he finds out that while he's been writing Kim romantic notes and thinking about how much he'll miss her on Valentine's Day, she's been humping the Ricker -- a notion that ruins his dream of white picket fences, kids, and maybe even a house. Sure, he ends up on a spastic road trip with Ivy Miller (Reese Witherspoon) to stop the letter with loving phrases like "cellulite-packed cactuses that you call thighs," and finds real love, but before that, he has a good cry in his cocoa and a lot of humiliation.

If you've ever had a bad first date -- and in the age of internet match-ups, it's all the more likely you've had at least a disappointing one -- you're not alone. Thanks to the awkwardness of getting to know somebody, and the nervousness that comes with that, it's a wonder any of us ever have good first dates. But as much as we end up fixating on the failure of a single bad date, we must remember that it's a part of life and has been since the dawn of man, when Adam had to deal with Eve ordering the forbidden item on the menu. Also, we must realize that it's all relative and there's always a worse date out there than the worst we've ever had. Often (and especially because it's Valentine's Day this Thursday), it's a good idea to look to the movies, and compare our worst first date to the worst first dates in cinema:


License to Drive (1988)

Imagine you're all set to get your driver's license, and the hottest girl in school has agreed to go out with you the night you pass the exam. But you don't pass the exam. Then you steal your grandpa's car. Then your date drinks too much and passes out for the rest of the night. Oh, and it only gets worse from there. License to Drive is just one of many films that shows us that a first date can be a crazy mix of Murphy's Law and the snowball effect. Also, like many comedies, it teaches us that an automobile can be destroyed many times over, and that it might be best if our first time driving, as well as our first time dating, be with a car that has little value.

I was a little hard on the International Press Academy last year, but they made some ridiculous decisions when handing out their Satellite Awards. Still, at least they came off as being different than every other year-end awards giver by picking winners like Joseph Cross and X-Men: The Last Stand (best comedic actor and best editing, respectively). Those are at least some interesting, unpredictable picks, right? This year, I feel the need to be harder on the organization, because it's gone totally predictable in honoring No Country for Old Men, Juno, Sicko, American Gangster, Ratatouille, Diablo Cody and Christopher Hampton, among others. The actors they honored -- Marion Cotillard, Viggo Mortensen, Ellen Page, Ryan Gosling, Tom Wilkinson/Casey Affleck (tied) and Amy Ryan -- aren't all the most obvious choices, but they aren't shocking, either. Couldn't they have at least gone with nominee Clive Owen or his nominated "comedy or musical" Shoot 'Em Up (!?!?!?), or something?

Not that the winners aren't deserving, but what good is yet another awards ceremony if it's not going to distinguish itself from the Golden Globes, which are the Satellite's unrecognized yet unmistakable "baby daddy". Yeah, the Hollywood Foreign Press will likely go with some other winners, but they won't seem that different. Again, I do salute the IPA for having a documentary category, though it wouldn't have hurt to give The King of Kong its one possible prestigious(?) award -- not that it was actually a better film than fellow nominee No End in Sight. Also, it's always enjoyable to see what the IPA picks for best DVDs (The Prestige for overall; Borat and Masters of Horror Season 1 (tied) for extras; Ratatouille for youth-oriented; Ken Burns' The War for documentary; The Graduate 40th Anniversary Edition for classic). For the rest of the nominees and winners, head over to Variety.

There's nothing like an eviction notice to make a man resort to desperate measures. Charles Webb, author of the original novel that was made into The Graduate, was facing homelessness when he decided to sell his unfinished sequel to Random House, which plans to publish the novel next year. The book will revisit Ben Braddock and his now-wife Elaine ten years later, as they home school their two children in upstate New York. The sequel is appropriately titled Home School (unless Random House changes it to simply The Graduate II -- I wouldn't be surprised), and Mrs. Robinson is somehow featured in its story. Webb isn't sure whether or not a movie will be made since he doesn't know how the rights will be handled. Originally, he didn't receive a dime for the rights to The Graduate. His last novel, New Cardiff, was adapted into the film Hope Springs.

Obviously if there is a film, the cast of the original would not return (although it would be interesting to have Katherine Ross return as her character's mother), and the Mike Nichols film is such a classic that anybody cast in the iconic roles will spark controversy and protest. Then there's the matter of the soundtrack. Okay, that is easy -- a number of artists today are going for that Simon and Garfunkel sound. See the Garden State soundtrack for evidence. The thing I'm most worried about is that now we may get a sequel to Rumor Has It to explain its character's connection to Webb's follow-up.

I don't want to write an obituary for Anne Bancroft. I could go and  say a couple of things about her life and her filmography, but that would seem a little disingenous to me. Because really, I'm the kind of fan that Bancroft would have hated - I love her first, foremost, and virtually only, because of The Graduate (although The Turning Point is good, too).

It was one of those movies that just seemed to be on all the time when I was growing up, and as a result, I think I internalized a lot of its imagery without really understanding any of its meaning. By the time I was an 18-year-old freshman in film school and sitting through Mike Nichol's film cut-by-cut in a lecture, the damage had already been done - Mrs. Robinson had already managed to influence me. Not that I'm a cradle-robbing alcoholic (at least, not yet),  but certainly, style-wise, my entire fashion aesthetic seems almost unconciously modelled after Anne Bancroft in that film. The leopard print, the sunglasses, the big brown hair with the golden highlight at the crown. I remember as a kid just thinking that her look was the coolest, and I've never really gotten over it.

So I went online and I tried to find a photo gallery from the film, so that I could demonstrate what I'm on about here, but there isn't much. Instead, take a look at this page from NPR; they've got tons of audio features (including a report by Don Lee on the making of the film and interviews with Buck Henry, Mike Nichols and Dustin Hoffman) and a video clip from the film, of Benjamin's first encounter with Mrs. Robinson. The New York Times has more, including movie trailers and a short, career-spanning slide show.