The following podcast contains explicit language.

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and that offer code is Slate. I'm Stephen Metcalf, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest,

Angelina Jolie Model American Edition. It's Wednesday, July 28th, 2010. On today's program,

the new Angelina Jolie vehicle, Salt, Comic-Con, with our guest

Lev Grossman of Time Magazine and Madman, season four. Joining me today is Slate's deputy editor,

Julia Turner. Hello, Julia. Hi, Steve. And we're feeling the absence of Dana Stevens,

who's on vacation this week, and we have three guests

to fill in, the first of whom is Jessica Gross, managing editor of Double X. Hello, Jessica.

Hi, Sue. Thanks so much for joining us again. It was fun to have you last time, and it'll be fun

again this time to walk us through the I find very odd movie that I went to see last night.

Salt.

Where to begin with this?

What did you make of it?

Well, the first thing I said to Julia when we walked out of the screening was, what a deeply silly movie.

It is just frothy summer fun. And the second you start thinking too hard about the plot, it makes very marginal

sense.

The broad outline is Angelina Jolie is a CIA agent.

The movie opens with her in North Korea, having been kidnapped and her husband, who is,

oh, he's not her husband yet, her love.

...