The year is 2003 and at Christmas you tell the truth.

So boy are we about to, about the movie? Love actually.

Hello everyone and welcome to Unspooled. I'm Amy Nicholson. And I'm Paul Sheer and this is the podcast where we're trying to find the hundred best movies and when we do, we're going to blast them in the

space. No joke. We have talked to a NASA scientist about it. Here's the deal people. We are in a different type of a month. We are not doing our normal mini series. Amy, we are doing a little something different this month.

Yes, we are just treating ourselves man. It's a great deal.

We are doing a mini series that we're just going to call stocking stuffers as a way to shove together to Christmas movies we want to do. And the beginning of a quadrology that will climax over the break. Let's just say we're going to do the first matrix in honor of the new matrix. Why? Because it's Christmas and because it's a lot of things that we're going to do.

We're going to do the first matrix. Why? Because it's Christmas and because we can actually that's right. And if we know anything about Christmas from the film that we're talking about today, which is love actually Christmas is a time for honesty. It's a time for doing what you want to do. And it's a time for basically being a real son of a bitch.

Amy, I'm so excited to talk about love actually with you, but I also want to just tip our hat to the end of our musical series. And I have to say last week we talked a lot about little shop of horrors and the way that film was constructed.

There was something really interesting there. We were talking about a cinematic film that also had very theatrical staging in moments.

And I watched a net again, which I highly recommend to everybody because I think it's one of the best movies of the year. And I watched it after I watched the Sparks Brothers documentary.

And watching them back to back actually gave me a much better sense of that movie, which I already love, but I loved it more. And I couldn't help but see the similarities in a net and little shop of horrors.

And it is a tremendous amount of theatricality to that. You could see this as a staged production, but also some really amazing ways that it's, you know, you could never see that on stage, you know, incredibly cinematic.

So I just couldn't stop thinking about little shop of horrors and watching a net. I didn't know if you had seen any similarities between the two.

It's interesting. We're like starting a build into the awards conversation at the end of the year, the top tens of the year. I don't think a net has been getting enough praise.

And it came under really strong in the summer. And I actually was knocked out by a net. It was the kind of movie that I personally really love when they asked the audience to use 10% of their imagination to fill out the world even more.

You know, they do things just a little bit stagy, you know, having shipwrecks that aren't trying to be like all CGI, Roland, Emmerich, you know, people that see and here's what's going to happen.

They ask you to participate in playing along and creating the whole world of this musical by making it a little bit stiff in corners, artificial in corners, playing so much that I just adored it.

And I love movies that ask me to play along with them, which I guess is why I love musicals because that is the key of them. By the way, did you know that there is a musical connection to love actually?

No.

Oh, let me tell you this because before Richard Curtis wrote live actually and everything else he wrote that got him to the point of making and writing and directing love actually.

He wrote songs for a little fake band called the Hebe Gb's and you just have to hear this track. This is called meaningless songs in very high voices.

And I want to say that now before we talk about love action.

...