Silver Nitrate Witches

Your Silver Nitrate Witches don't miss a beat in this episode on Damien Chazelle's iconic jazz world movie from the 2010s, starring Miles Teller and JK Simmons. We cover what it means to be an artist, if success and ambition are gendered, homophobia and racial representation, and whether movies need to have clear morals and likeable characters (hint, hint: they don't!).

You can find your Silver Nitrate Witches, Laura Valenza and Isabelle Lang, on various online platforms @ljvalenza and @bellang303. You can check out more about Fine Motor at finemotormusic.com.

Who knew bread could be so fascinating?

Your Silver Nitrate Witch Laura Valenza brings you a charming anecdote and fun film fact. Come back soon for full length episodes with (Isabelle Lang as well) on Whiplash, School of Rock, Finding Forrester, and more!

Thank you to Fine Motor for the use of their song "Highway Moon."

This week we don’t have a whole witches’ brew, but just a little sleeping draught for you: a minisode looking into the Siskel & Ebert reception of the 1983 film Educating Rita, with one of your Silver Nitrate Witches, Isabelle Lang. Let’s talk education as granting choice, alcoholic academics, and our shared annoyance with Roger Ebert’s thoughts on literature movies.

You can find your Silver Nitrate Witches, Laura Valenza and Isabelle Lang, on various online platforms @ljvalenza and @bellang303. You can check out more about Fine Motor at finemotormusic.com.

This episode, your Silver Nitrate Witches head off to boarding school, despite Laura's protests that they're super scary, and take a look at the reception to the 1989 Robin Williams movie that's not quite a Robin Williams movie, Dead Poets Society.

You can find your Silver Nitrate Witches, Laura Valenza and Isabelle Lang, on various online platforms @ljvalenza and @bellang303. You can check out more about Fine Motor at finemotormusic.com.

Your Silver Nitrate Witches (Laura Valenza and Isabelle Lang) are brewing pink potions with a touch of peroxide this week. The competition for dye jobs and law jobs proves steep at Harvard where we're rooting for Elle Woods to succeed in Legally Blonde (2001). We cover women's empowerment and sisterhood, the early 2000s and their weird obsession with dumb blonde jokes, and contemporary fascism. Plus, ChatGPT helps us recreate MGM's "The Blonde Translator."

BTW, the Yale professor who was interviewed on American Hysteria and has some great books on understanding fascism? His name's Jason Stanley.

You can find your Silver Nitrate Witches on various online platforms @ljvalenza and @bellang303. You can check out more about Fine Motor at finemotormusic.com.

Welcome to the Silver Nitrate Witches’ Movie Review Brew. Laura Valenza and Isabelle Lang explore the way we review movies! From experienced critics to posts from casual viewers, we want to talk about how we talk about movies, how that’s changed over time, what directions we see it going in, and more. Announcing the theme of Season 2!

Did you ever wonder how Hollywood came to be? Did you ever wonder how Thomas Edison was a part of that? Did you even know there was a connection there? We did! The Silver Nitrate Witches give you a special episode today on how Hollywood was almost New Jersey.

You can find your Silver Nitrate Witches, Laura Valenza and Isabelle Lang, on various online platforms @ljvalenza and @bellang303. You can check out more about Fine Motor at finemotormusic.com.

This week, the Silver Nitrate Witches travel to New Mexico to explore the reviews and reception of Salt of the Earth (1954), a film based on the historic 1951 strike against the Empire Zinc Company. This three-part series has everything: communists, Catholic newspapers, feminism, deportation, and even a prison full of women chanting “We want bathrooms!”

You can find your Silver Nitrate Witches, Laura Valenza and Isabelle Lang, on various online platforms @ljvalenza and @bellang303. You can check out more about Fine Motor at finemotormusic.com.

This week, the Silver Nitrate Witches travel to New Mexico to explore the reviews and reception of Salt of the Earth (1954), a film based on the historic 1951 strike against the Empire Zinc Company. This three-part series (whoops, it got longer!) has everything: communists, Catholic newspapers, feminism, deportation, and even a prison full of women chanting “We want bathrooms!”

You can find your Silver Nitrate Witches, Laura Valenza and Isabelle Lang, on various online platforms @ljvalenza and @bellang303. You can check out more about Fine Motor at finemotormusic.com.