EXCLUSIVE! Prisoner Orlando Bloom (Third from right--behind the bone) struggles to escape from the latest POTC films

You know how it goes around the holidays: The office can slow down a bit and you tend to get a little less motivated, even as the spirit of the season has you feeling increasingly magnanimous.

That is, unless you are a publicist for Disney, where history clearly shows there is no rest for the wicked and with whom Cinematical's Mark Beall had a recent, unfortunate scrape:

Sometime yesterday, I posted a few paragraphs about the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean movies (2 and 3) that contained a bit of spoiler information. Sometime today, Disney realized that this information was on the Web, and has been methodically working to remove this information. As such, we here at Cinematical received the following email today:

"Hello Cinematical Crew -

My name is [edited] and I work with Disney on the film releases. As you know, Latino Review posted a review of the POTC 3 script earlier this week. They have since removed the review and we have been working to get it removed from other sites, as well. ...

Is it possible for you to remove it? We are very sensitive to surprises from the 2nd and 3rd films to be ruined for fans.

Thanks,
[edited]"

A brief follow-up correspondence with Disney indicated to us that not only is it "possible" for us to remove it, it is in fact imperative. Ergo, the post has been gutted.

Wait, wait, wait--which post was gutted? You mean this one?

Pirates 3 begins in the Orient, where Elizabeth Swann, Keira Knightley's character, is taking a prisoner to the dread pirate Sao Feng. We soon see that she's in cahoots with Barbossa, the evil ghost pirate from the first film. The plan is to exchange the hooded prisoner for some charts in Sao Feng’s possession. The prisoner turns out to be none other than Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner; and the charts are for the location of Davey Jones’ locker- a pseudo purgatory where Jack Sparrow is currently residing after his death aboard the sinking Black Pearl.

Wacky. While the plot reveals some very interesting information, the bit that jumps out at me the most is the return of Captain Barbossa, which means the return of Geoffrey Rush! I know, I know, all of the major actors are returning, and I should be excited for them all…but really, we all knew that a third film wouldn’t happen without the three principles. They could have tried to do without Geoffrey, and that would have just made me sad. Even if, by all logic, his character should be gone gone gone.

First of all, this spoiler is not even complete--there is no millionth reference to Johnny Depp channeling Keith Richards or the Oscar-worthiness of Depp's hammy-ass performance is POTC 1. Nevertheless, it is refreshing to see Disney acknowledge--however indirectly--that the spoilers are indeed accurate. I would hate to see a publicity intern kept from flying home for Thanskgiving just to spin the hell out of another Orlando Bloom tank job.

That said, before Disney e-mails me, it might consider rubbing out another press release to solve its real problem in the Orient. The Phillipine president and her exiled husband are not quite doing it for your image, kids.