AND AS THE FROZEN IMAGE OF JOHN BENDER WALKING ACROSS THE FIELD, FIST RAISED ALOFT IN DEFIANT TRIUMPH, FADED INTO A QUOTE FROM DAVID BOWIE'S "CHANGES" AND THE FIRST NOTES OF SIMPLE MINDS' "DON'T YOU" BEGAN TO ESCAPE THE SPEAKERS, THE COLOR DRAINED FROM HIS FACE, HE LET GO HIS LAST BREATH, AND SLIPPED THIS MORTAL COIL: "The Breakfast Club" is just one of the films on the Sunday Mail's list of the 50 Films to See Before You Die.

Link via Pop Candy.

GHOSTTOWN RATS: Sir Bob Geldof canceled his show after selling only 45 tickets. For an arena that held 18,000.

I saw Blue Oyster Cult at a theater in San Diego in about 1992 with about 150 or 200 people. Cool show. Comments regarding big name headliners* in small (or undersold) venues welcome.

* Disclaimer: Yes, I know BOC was only a big-name headliner for about 2 years in the mid-1970s.

TO BE FOLLOWED BY AN APPRECIATION OF THE MOST EXPENSIVE, EXPANSIVE PIECE OF INTERSTATE THEY EVER MADE: The NYT says nice things about Philadelphia City Hall. Among the superlatives:

Its 548-foot tower — surpassing all the cathedrals of Europe — is topped by the largest statue on any building, anywhere: a 37-foot-high William Penn, the city’s founder, standing as tall as a town house. It is said to have the largest clocks on any building; it would loom over Big Ben.

With about 27 acres of floor space, this behemoth is bigger than every other municipal seat in the nation, all 50 state capitols and the national Capitol. The American Institute of Architects called it “perhaps the greatest single effort of late-19th-century American architecture.”

However, there is still that issue about the Curse.

ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING: What does it meant to still be a clerk, a decade later, and why would a director still make movies about them? These are the questions which Clerks II: The Clerkening seeks to answer, and it does so in surprisingly entertaining fashion.

Let me get the negatives out of the way first: Kevin Smith should never cast his wife in another movie. Nobody else does, and there's a reason. And he still doesn't know how to create a realistic female character -- they're all saints or bitches, with the exception of the title character in Chasing Amy. And Smith still doesn't know what to do with a camera.

But with a pen, writing male dialogue and with the pop culture references . . . he has his moments, and many of them are quite good. Exuberant, even. I will not spoil them here.

What really saves the movie is the third act, because it makes a pivot towards the questions I alluded to above, and handles them in a way that's both true to the characters and, much like Shyamalan attempts in Lady in the Water, explains what motivates Smith as a writer-director after the failure of Jersey Girl.

Also, there's a donkey.

PERHAPS THEY COULDN'T FIND A WAY TO MAKE IT WORK: Wasn't part of the prize for the last Project Runway challenge that Miss USA would actually wear the gown as her "evening gown" in the pageant? Well, doesn't look like she did. No word on Tim Gunn's thoughts on the dress she actually wore.

DECIDEDLY NOT A GOOD DAY FOR DEBBIE DOWNER: While a number of media outlets have reported that Lorne Michaels mentioned during the 30 Rock press session that SNL will return with a slimmed-down cast next year, Alan Sepinwall is, as far as I know, first to report that while SNL press reps tried to walk it back later, Rachel Dratch will be departing to do 30 Rock full time, and Horatio Sanz has departed to spend more time being painfully unfunny off-camera.

AS OPPOSED TO DWIGHT'S REASON FOR DOING SO IN "THE INJURY": While other sites feature tv critics blogging from the annual summer press tour, we've gone in the other direction -- our good friend Shonda Rhimes sent in this note from the other side of the curtain:

I just want to say out loud to everyone at Throwing Things that I met Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute from The Office) AND Aaron Sorkin all in one night at the TCA Awards. I almost vomited with excitement. Seriously. I'm sure I came off as a crazed psychotic stalker fan to both men but, since that is what I am, I guess it's alright.

Why was Shonda there, you might ask? Saturday night, Grey's Anatomy received the Television Critics Association award for Program of the Year. Wh-hoo!