My superficial objections to Sarah Palin: http://tinyurl.com/68ujo7

My superficial objections to Sarah Palin:

1. Her children have the following names: Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig Paxson. My objections to non-names are well documented. I have always taken a firm stance on this issue.

2. She speaks with the lazy-vowel accent, common in rural parts of the West, that drives me crazy. Here’s a sound bite from her introductory speech on Friday, in which she refers to “oil fillds” and “the United Stillworkers Union.” Again, my feelings (sorry, “fillings”) about this are on the record.

I’ve updated my previous list of season-premiere dates to include brand-new series. There aren’t as many new shows this year as there usually are (more fallout from the writers’ strike), so it shouldn’t be too hard to check out the ones that look promising. It helps that several of the new entries are on the CW, which makes it easy to write them off.

McCain is not only older than his running mate, he’s older than the state she’s governor of.

I’m off to see a double feature of “Disaster Movie” and “College.” May God have mercy on my soul.

The candidates’ names are mellifluous! Obama-Biden! McCain-n-Palin! They roll off the tongue so musically.

Hoo boy! Do you smell that? That’s the movie studios dumping their leftover crap into theaters because it’s the last weekend of summer. Four wide releases this week, and THREE of them are Hollywood’s Shameful Secrets©®™. I don’t know if we’ve ever had that many in one weekend before. Perhaps this is Hollywood’s most shameful weekend in history.

The one that was screened for critics was “Traitor,” which actually opened Wednesday. I reviewed it for Film.com. It stars Don Cheadle as a man who might be a terrorist. Great cast, a few good ideas, not a very good movie.

The three that the studios were embarrassed by are:

• “Disaster Movie,” which is the latest from the masterminds who brought us “Date Movie,” “Epic Movie,” and “Meet the Spartans,” which probably tells you everything you need to know right there.

• “Babylon A.D.,” starring Vin Diesel as a mercenary transporting a woman from Russia to America. The director, Mathieu Kassovitz, has already publicly disowned the film, saying Twentieth-Century Fox forced him to water it down, cut 15 minutes out of the running time, and totally ruin it. Generally, if the director of a film tells you it’s lousy, you should go ahead and take his word for it.

• “College,” in which some high school kids go on a “campus preview” weekend at the college; hilarity ensues. The film wants to be the “Animal House” or “American Pie” of the 2000s. I’m not going to hold my breath on that one.

I’ll have reviews of “Disaster Movie” and “College” by tomorrow. I’m seeing them back-to-back this afternoon, so keep me in your prayers. “Babylon A.D.” is still up in the air. Of the three, it’s the one that has the most potential for being entertaining — bad sci-fi films are funnier than bad comedies — but it’s also the one that nobody’s paying me to review, and cramming three Shameful Secrets into one weekend is kind of rough. So we’ll see.

Also reviewed are the terrific indie drama “Frozen River” and the so-so prestige flick “Elegy,” starring Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz’s breasts. (For real! Both of them! They practically have speaking roles!)

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I stole this from E! Online. (Thanks, Kristin!) Please note that this schedule is only for returning shows. The schedule for premiere dates of brand-new series is forthcoming. Also, note that times are for the Pacific and Eastern time zones. Everything airs an hour earlier in the Mountain and Central zones. (Why? These reasons.)

UPDATE: I’ve added the new shows to the schedule. They’re marked with an asterisk. This info comes from The Futon Critic. If something is wrong or missing, take it up with them.

Monday, Sept. 1
Gossip Girl (CW), 8 p.m.
One Tree Hill (CW), 9 p.m.
Prison Break (Fox), 8 p.m.

Tuesday, Sept. 2
The Shield (FX), 10 p.m.
*90210 (CW), 8 p.m.

Wednesday, Sept. 3
America’s Next Top Model (CW), 8 p.m.
Bones (Fox), 8 p.m.

Continue reading…

“Cocktail” isn’t the worst film to be featured in Eric’s Bad Movies at Film.com, but it is among the most boring and emotionally hollow. If anyone other than Tom Cruise (at the height of his popularity) had starred in it, it would have been a made-for-USA Network special.

Someone e-mailed me to ask that I reinstate the “guess next week’s movie” game, and I explained to him why I had stopped. (It was because I wasn’t working a week ahead, so I often didn’t know what the next movie would be.) Then that person posted a comment last week imploring me to reinstate it, as if I hadn’t already explained its absence to him privately! So that person is dead to me and can’t guess anymore. We don’t tolerate cheekiness around here.

Anyway, next week’s movie is from the latter half of the 1990s and stars two people who had (and still have) music careers (separately — they’re not a duo) but became famous for their acting. One of them is definitely more famous now for acting than for music, while the other could be argued either way (but I’d lean toward acting). A third cast member is an Oscar-winner who has a close relative who’s also an Oscar-winner. A fourth cast member was in a famous Oscar-winning movie, though he himself did not win one. A fifth cast member has been nominated for an Oscar, but for writing, not acting. Make your guesses below, if you so choose.

The following people are celebrating birthdays today:

Macauley Culkin (28)
Chris Burke, the Down syndrome guy from “Life Goes On” (43)
Mother Teresa (98, except for being dead)
Tom Ridge, first secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (63)
Mark Snow, composer of the “X-Files” theme music (62)
Chris Pine, who plays Capt. Kirk in the upcoming “Star Trek” reboot (28)
Geraldine Ferraro (73)
Will Shortz, New York Times crossword puzzle editor (56)
Eric D. Snider (34)

In some regions, today is also known as Totally Stupid Day.

Feel free to wish any of these people a happy birthday and/or Totally Stupid Day in the space below!