‘The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile’ Blu-Ray Review – An Invaluable Portrait Of A Legend

Trailblazing, hell-raising country music legend Tanya Tucker defied the standards of how a woman in country music was supposed to behave. Decades after Tanya slipped from the spotlight, rising Americana music star Brandi Carlile takes it upon herself to write an entire album for her hero based on Tanya’s extraordinary life, spurring the greatest comeback in country music history.

THE RETURN OF TANYA TUCKER follows Tanya’s richly creative, utterly captivating, bumpy ride back to the top as Brandi encourages her to push past her fears to create a new sound and reach a new audience. The writing, the experimenting, and refining of this new music mixes with all that came before – using rare archival footage and photographs to delve into Tanya’s history, beginning in a single wide trailer in Seminole, Texas.

Taking stock of the past while remaining vitally alive in the present and keeping an eye on the future, THE RETURN OF TANYA TUCKER is a rousing exploration of an unexpected friendship built on the joy of a perfectly timed creative collaboration.

For in-depth thoughts on The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile, please see my colleague Devin McGrath-Conwell’s review from its original SXSW debut here. 

Video Quality

The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile comes to Blu-Ray in its original aspect ratio from a gorgeous high definition master. The film provides a good balance of new interviews with a substantial amount of archival footage and photos. All of the footage looks as technically excellent as it can look in high definition. The transfer appears to have plenty of room to breathe and there are no issues with compression artifacts, banding or other digital nuisances. 

The footage of the older material seems to be the best version of it that would be possible, with most of it looking at least decent to very good. New interview segments and fly-on-the-wall footage look sleek and clear with natural skin tones and detailed facial features. The colors featured in the film are natural and vibrant as they provide a nice visual pop on screen throughout. Black levels are deep and give way to a nice amount of detail in shadows. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has done right by this title. 

Audio Quality

This Blu-Ray comes with a top tier DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track which brings this material to rich life. The music is the soul of the film, and it radiates with flawless fidelity as it fills the room. Environmental sounds are plentiful when in public spaces which adds a lot of texture to the world. Dialogue comes through crisp and clear without being clipped by any competing sounds. The filmmakers do a really great job of capturing their subjects when they are out in the world and making sure all this information comes through with supreme clarity. You could not have asked for a better audio presentation for this one. There are optional English, English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles included for those who desire them. 

Special Features

• Previews: There are trailers provided for Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams, Julia, Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story and Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song.

Final Thoughts

The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile is a joyous look at a country music legend who has been tragically overlooked throughout most of her career. This piece does a good job of establishing why we should care about maintaining her legacy, but beyond that we get to know a pair of uniquely talented artists on an intimate level which never feels sanitized for mass consumption. The music is great and the candid footage is even better. Outside of perhaps being slightly overlong, this is a prime example of what a biographical documentary should aspire to be. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has released a Blu-Ray with a stellar A/V presentation but not much in the way of special features. If you have even a fleeting interest in the subject, this is worth a watch. Recommended 

The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile can be purchased on Blu-Ray directly through MovieZyng or various other online retailers.  

Note: Images presented in this review are not reflective of the image quality of the Blu-Ray.

Disclaimer: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has supplied a copy of this disc free of charge for review purposes. All opinions in this review are the honest reactions of the author.