Two nuggets of news. Via Nimbos, I learn that the short film The Cat Came Back is now available online. I was surprised to see that it was made as recently as 1988. This is a very clear childhood memory and I will no doubt have the song in my head for days to come.

And from the BBC comes the very good news that the “singy lady” will soon be available in the shops as BBC Worldwide will be releasing a collection of Murray Gold‘s Doctor Who music.

Went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest at the weekend. Pretty enjoyable, but a bit baffling in places if you’ve not seen the first film – or, as in my case, you’ve seen the first film but forgotten much of it in the three years since.

The CGI was so good in most parts that I didn’t even think about it – there were just one or two Kraken shots which gave the game away. Johnny Depp steals the film, acting everyone else off the screen; poor Orlando Bloom is left looking, if not wet, then a little moist. Bill Nighy plays a very convincing Davy Jones, although I don’t understand why he was Scottish, and I’m sure he didn’t look like that when he was in The Monkees. Keira Knightley surprises by being quite good in a few scenes, but is pretty ropey at times. I can’t help remembering that awful Domino movie – one of the worst performances I’ve ever seen in the cinema, and I only saw the trailer.

At points, Dead Man’s Chest was exciting and had great snippets of dialogue. But, at two-and-a-half hours, it’s too damn long and some sequences dragged. The scene Alex describes as “exhilarating swashbuckling” I’m afraid I found overlong – you know no-one is going to win the swordfight, and, because the MacGuffin in being fought over is elsewhere, the action feels ilke a sideshow. Plus, the rolling water wheel was a retread of the rolling cage on the island early on – part of an entire section which could have been dropped to make the film a more manageable length without any impact on the plot.

Finally, I felt cheated by the end: yes, I enjoyed most of the film, but I expected to be rewarded for sitting through it. Instead, it stuck up two fingers and put out its hand for the ticket price to the second sequel. The Empire Strikes Back might have got away with it, but Dead Man’s Chest doesn’t.

For other views: Ryan, Gordon.

How did I miss this? The Actor Toby Stephens – whom you may knowing from such TV series as Cambridge Spies and Waking the Dead, or as the villain in the awful Bond film Die Another Day – is the son of Maggie Smith and the late Robert Stephens.

Stephens, regardless of his other roles, was the evil Abner Brown in the BBC’s classic adapation of John Masefield’s The Box of Delights. And Smith, regardless of her other roles, was marvellous in Murder by Death.

Writer-director Eli Roth’s second film, Hostel, is an improvement on his enjoyable but relatively unremarkable debut Cabin Fever. Hostel seems closer in content and style to British horror films of the 1970s than the usual American slasher fare – and, occasionally, a voyeurism that it also shares with 70s horror – but with a slickness that’s suitable modern. That an executive producer is Quentin Tarantino, whose Pulp Fiction plays on the television when the protagonists arrival at the eponymous hostel, is no coincidence.

The film follows two American backbackers, competently played by Jay Hernandez and Derek Richardson, who travel to Slovakia with their Icelandic friend. There, an apparent utopia of drink and sex masks a violent and deadly truth, as one by one the travellers disappear. Slovakia is unfortunate enough to be picked on as the location and as a result gets somewhat misrepresented – although it’s not always clear in the film who’s telling the truth.

Effectively directed, suitably eerie, and with a satisfying finale, Hostel also has its fair share of gore – although not notably more than other recent horror films. It is a touch more sadistic, but just about justifies this as a necessary part of the plot. It lacks a clear message beyond “Americans need to get out more” – although given what happens to the Americans in the film, it may have the opposite effect. Nevertheless, it’s a strong challenger to Saw for the best recent American horror movie.