Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (2019 Documentary)
Recently released on Blu-ray and DVD: Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, Funan, Battle of Leningrad and Tel Aviv on Fire.
Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (Kino Lorber)
Linda Ronstadt was a full-throated singer and emotive balladeer straddling pop, country and rock. The Sound of My Voice is a lively documentary built on a priceless trove of archival footage and photos. It’s told in Ronstadt’s voice, with the help of a slew of collaborators such as Don Henley, Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt and David Geffen. The dislocating anxiety of arena rock pushed Ronstadt to her next step—operetta! And it didn’t stop there.
Funan (Shout! Factory)
In Hollywood, animation is indelibly stamped with comedy but elsewhere, animators are unafraid to handle dark, difficult topics. Based on his family’s experience under the Khmer Rouge, the award-wining France-based director Denis Do conjures up the pre-1975 Cambodian society crushed by rifle butts. Puritanical mutant Maoists, the Khmer Rouge forced 1.5 million people out of cities and into farm camps in their bid to construct utopia. Funan dramatizes the events in full emotional color.
Battle of Leningrad (MPI Media)
This 2019 movie by Russian writer-director Aleksey Kozlov isn’t about the famed World War II siege of Leningrad by the Nazis but is inspired instead by incidents around the city before the German stranglehold was set. The production values and storyboarding are familiar to American audiences from countless Netflix features complete with pyrotechnics, heroism and romance. The incredible but somehow compelling tale is framed by reminiscences by an elderly woman, one of the last survivors.
Tel Aviv on Fire
The personal becomes political in this 2018 comedy by Arab-Israeli director Sameh Zoabi when ne’er do well Salam stumbles into a writing job on a Palestinian soap opera produced on the West Bank. Taken into custody at a checkpoint, he begins collaborating on the story with an Israeli officer whose wife is a fan of the show. Zoabi spoofs absurd assumptions and stereotypes found on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a light, sophisticated touch.
