Director Davis Guggenheim’s documentary “Waiting for Superman” sheds light on the failings of the American public education system, but as we mentioned earlier this week, not every school is a failure — so long as they’re rooted in fiction, that is.

Likewise, there are many students that have passed through the halls of movie high schools that students today can look up to and admire for a whole variety of reasons. After the jump, check out five of our favorite students in film history!

August Rush
An orphan who is unwittingly separated from his loving parents, young Evan Taylor can hear music in absolutely everything. When he travels to New York to find his folks, he transforms himself into August Rush, a brilliant composer whose skills are only refined further thanks to his enrollment at the Juilliard School. Note that we’re not advocating running away from home, little ones, but if you can hear music in the world, sometimes it’s best to follow your ear.

Bill & Ted
Dudes, I know that Bill S. Preston, Esquire and Ted Theodore Logan aren’t the brightest bulbs of the bunch, but you can’t say that these two high school doofuses haven’t given it their best effort. Heck, they traveled all the way back through time and met some of history’s finest figures all in an effort to ace a history paper and save the future. That’s the kind of dedication that every student should have!

Cher Horowitz
Definitely not the best role model when it comes to test scores and staying on top of your homework, Cher Horowitz is nonetheless a student to look up to. Perhaps a bit self-centered at first, Alicia Silverstone’s “Clueless” character eventually becomes a selfless matchmaker for her friends and teachers, donating plenty of her time to extracurricular activities and still maintaining a social life. Plus, she’s gorgeous, so there’s that!

Ferris Bueller
Like Cher, I’m not going to suggest you follow Ferris Bueller when it comes to studying habits. But Ferris is a natural genius and a gifted charmer, whose carefree attitude is definitely something to aspire to. “Life moves pretty fast,” he wisely advises his audience. “If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Words to live by, my friends — just make sure you don’t follow his staying-home-from-school tricks too often.

Hermione Granger
Finally, a student who actually studies! One could make the argument that Hermione hits the books a little bit too hard, but then they would be forgetting the fact that she also has time to battle Voldemort and his Death Eaters between study sessions. Not only is Hermione a warrior of the classroom, she’s a true wizard on the battlefield as well.

Tell us about some of your favorite fictional students in the comments and on Twitter!

AP – CNN’s continued struggles with its prime-time lineup led to the firing Friday of Jon Klein, the U.S. network’s top executive, less than two weeks before a schedule revamp he engineered was about to launch.

If ever there were two popular Hollywood properties that would end up crossing over, I must admit, I never expected them to be the Jason Bourne series and “Little Miss Sunshine.” But that’s exactly how The Hollywood Reporter‘s Heat Vision blog is describing Warner Bros.’s latest acquisition, “Family Getaway.”

The script was the first sale for newcomers Jeremiah Friedman and Nick Palmer. “We both went into shock and are still shock,” Friedman said to Heat Vision. “It’s a dream come true.”

Friedman works as a production assistant at Atticus Entertainment and Palmer has been teaching engineering and robotics at an afterschool program, but the two of them have been writing together since graduating from the American Film Institute in 2008, so it really is a Hollywood dream-come-true story.

The story is about an assassin who goes to have Thanksgiving at his parents’ house but the situation becomes, as described by Heat Vision, “a lot more dysfunctional” when some of his rival assassins come and crash the dinner. This sends the lead male and his family on a cross-country adventure in their family station wagon.

There’s no indication of how the film will straddle the line between action and comedy. This sounds like it could easily be a Steve Carrell flick if it went the comedy route, but it could also end up involving a lot of black comedy (like “Little Miss Sunshine”) and contain a lot of gritty action like the “Bourne” movies. It’s definitely something to keep an eye on, though, since Warner Bros. was so quick to snap it up, and could end up being a very fun and unique little property.

Does this film sound interesting to you? Do you find it nice to hear Hollywood dream-come-true stories?

AP – The Duggars have 19 and counting. Kate Gosselin has eight. Kody Brown has four. Wives, that is.

The Upshot – Tonight, the much-anticipated film about Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, will open nationwide to rave reviews — which early buzz has already graced with favorable comparisons to such classic films as “Citizen Kane” and “The Godfather.” So with the prospect that the film’s scabrous portrayal of the social-media titan may be a critical and [...]

AP – Black Friday in TV Land! A double whammy! High-level upset in the corporate suite of not one, but two, media giants!