The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hi, I'm Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, and I'm here with a Slate's spoiler special podcast on W, the new Oliver Stone biopic of George W. Bush.

I'm in the New York studio with Tim Noah, a senior writer at Slate. Hello, Tim.

Hey, Dana.

And you're up for today and tomorrow to the New York offices from D.C. Welcome.

Thank you.

So we both saw W, not together, over the last two days, and are both writing on it.

And I hope both have a lot to say about the movie.

Let's start off by answering the question that our engineer just posed to us before we began taping,

which is what kind of a movie is this? What sort of Beast is W.? He said, I've seen two trailers for the movie.

One is comic. one is dramatic. It's entirely impossible to tell what this movie's intent is.

It's sort of both.

It switches back and forth between a comedy and a serious historical drama.

The most comic element in it, I would say, is the extremely hilarious and wonderful performance

by Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice.

I don't know if you had this reaction, Dana, but I burst out laughing every time she opened

her mouth.

It's just, she just has a hilarious, dead-on imitation of Condi Rice.

Well, I think we have different takes on that performance. I agree with you that the performance is dead-on imitation of Condi Rice. Well, I think we have different takes on that performance.

I agree with you that the performance is dead on and extremely funny.

It's very broad, but it's quite funny.

It doesn't necessarily belong in the movie that it's in.

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