Bowfinger, Why Not? (DVD/ Blu-ray Comparison)

At the end of this summer, Paramount has upgraded a handful of back catalog titles to blu, including Problem Child, BASEketball, EDtv, For Love of the Game and my favorite of the bunch: Bowfinger.  At the moment, they're Best Buy exclusives.  It's just for a very limited time, though; they'll be available everywhere else later in October.  But for now, you can only get them from Best Buy.  And you can't argue with the price: $7.99.  So how does it look?
To a newcomer, I'd describe 1999's Bowfinger in four words: better than it looks.  Just based on the marketing, it just looks like another cartoonish, lame comedy, along the lines of stuff like All About Steve, Tammy, or even other Steve Martin flicks like Bringing Down the House.  But the difference is that this is actually written by Martin, so it's like a fun return to his crazier, earlier films with Carl Reiner, or even more so a return to material like LA Story.  So that's obviously not to say there's nothing cartoonish about this comedy; there's a lot of big, larger than life performances packed into this very goofy send-up of Hollywood.  Eddie Murphy plays dual roles, including one that makes Revenge of the Nerds look subtle.  But for this movie, it works.
Steve Martin is a struggling, independent filmmaker living in Hollywood, and Eddie Murphy is a major Tom Cruise-like movie star.  When Eddie's younger, charisma-less brother applies for a job with Martin's film company, Martin gets an idea for how he can get celebrity Murphy in one of his movies and make the big time.  He'll get his eccentric cast of starving artists to follow Murphy around and play out scenes around him while filming him without his knowledge.  Complicating things further, the movie Martin wants to make is a wacked out alien invasion movie.  It's not exactly a Whit Stillman flick, but it's smarter than you'd think, and is helped immensely by a terrific supporting cast including Heather Graham, Terrance Stamp, Robert Downey Jr., and the eternally underrated Christine Baranski.
Bowfinger came as a new release in the early days of DVD in 2000, and apart from being stuck inside a few budget combo packs like The Eddie Murphy Connection, hasn't been reissued since.  It's fortunate, then, since we never got any alternative choices, that it was a decent, widescreen special edition.  But now, finally in 2017, it's seeing its US HD debut (other countries have already gotten their blu-ray editions in the past year or so).  So is it a worthwhile upgrade?
2000 Paramount DVD on top; 2017 Paramount blu-ray below.
2017 Paramount blu-ray left; 2000 Paramount DVD right.
So, right off the bat, even though it's pretty damn old, it's a fine DVD.  It's anamorphic, not interlaced, and has essentially the same transfer that they kept for the blu-ray.  So it's definitely not a "need to replace" title.  But on the other hand, this is a legitimate HD upgrade.  Take a look at the close-up, and you can see how much clearer the detail on his skin and glasses is, and how much cleaner all the edges are.  Even the leaves on the left... everything is so much softer and flatter on the DVD.  You will appreciate the difference on a big screen.

One thing that's interesting: the old DVD has a strange pillar box on the left-hand side (I left the bars on the top set of comparison shots, so you can see for yourself).  Both discs are slightly letterboxed, but the bar on the right-hand side makes the DVD 1.83:1.  The blu doesn't removes that bar, revealing a sliver extra picture on the right, and correcting the aspect ratio to its proper 1.85:1.  It's not a huge deal; the DVD's left-side bar would've been pretty much hidden by older televisions' overscan area.  But it's nice that the blu-ray makes this little fix in addition to the basic HD boost in clarity.
Audio-wise, this film's modern enough that its always had a 5.1 mix.  The DVD offered both DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks, plus a French dub.  The blu-ray trims the fat to just the DTS 5.1, but now of course it's in DTS-HD.  It also adds optional English and French subtitles.

Extras-wise, there's no difference between the two editions.  We didn't get anything new, but at least none of the 2000 special features were dropped.  Director Frank Oz provides a quality audio commentary.  It's a little dry if you're expecting laughs on the Bowfinger commentary, but there's almost no dead air, and he's full of great info for fans of this flick.  There's a fundamental 'making of' featurette, which was clearly made for television, but gives you some decent interview clips and peaks behind the scenes.  Finally, there are some very brief deleted scenes and outtakes, plus the trailer.  The old disc had a few bonus trailers, text bios and an insert, but everything that matters from the DVD is still here.  The special features are so unchanged, in fact, they're still in SD.  You'd think they'd at least re-encode them to be anamorphic, but for some reason the major studios don't seem to like to do that.  Oh well.
So, hey, it's a respectable DVD to blu-ray upgrade.  It doesn't exactly go the extra mile to deliver a top of the line special edition, but studios aren't really doing that for their catalog titles anymore unless it's one of their top ten best selling classics.  So, for what it is: an enjoyable film presented with a fine blu-ray transfer and the legacy extras, you should be pleased.  Especially since these titles are being priced so cheap.  When I picked this up at my Best Buy, not only did they have it at the $7.99 price, but it was on their 'buy one, get one free' shelf with the other Paramount exclusives and a handful of other random discs.  So I'm not blown away, but I'm happy with it.

Controversial Blus: Dead Ringers (DVD/ Blu-ray Comparison)

Man, it's a real shame this had to be a "Controversial Blu."  I mean, first of all, it's a shame when any blu is controversial, because it means it's got dissatisfied fans.  And it's a shame because David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers is a terrific film.  And it's more of a shame because there aren't any better import or alternative options (we'll get into that a bit more later).  But it's particularly a shame in this case because Scream Factory seem to have gone above and beyond in order to make sure that this was as satisfying and un-controversial as possible, going so far as to include two alternate transfers on two separate discs, just to please everybody.  Unfortunately...
Dead Ringers is pure Cronenberg in all the best ways.  It draws in all the influences and techniques grown out of his earlier horror work and pushes them into a genuinely affecting human drama.  Much of his later, dramatic work strays too far from his established energies; and while I can certainly empathize with his desire to shift into more mature work than wild splatter of his early career, it winds up feeling like predictable, bland journeyman fare.  Not only is his spark still here, it's a crackling electrical storm of lethal energy.  As Cronenberg moved from one stage of his career to the next, this was the perfect medium, the best of both worlds.
Jeremy Irons plays twin gynecologists (and yes, on a technical level, this was a film that blazed new special effects ground) who struggle to deal with the changes as they grow apart.  But as great as Irons is in a showy dual role, Geneviève Bujold steals the show as the catalyst for destruction, an actress who loves one twin but not the other.  The film has some nightmarish imagery but ultimately follows the path of the real life Marcus twinsHoward Shore delivers a powerful score that rather anticipates the music he'd later create for The Lord Of the Rings, and Scanners star Stephen Lack pops in for a very cool cameo.
So let's get into it.  Anchor Bay originally put Dead Ringers out as a barebones, non-anamorphic widescreen (1.66:1) DVD back in 1998.  It was basically a port of Criterion's laserdisc, and they put out their own edition (same transfer, but now with lots of special features), later that same year.  When their rights reverted to Warner Bros, they put out a new edition, mis-framed at 1.78:1 with new extras, but losing the Criterion ones.  And then that Warner Bros 1.78 transfer started turning up on blu-ray in later years, in France, Australia and Russia; and they were always also interlaced with lossy audio ...though still a decent upgrade in terms of clearer HD at least.  Finally, Scream Factory came around last year to release what should've been the ultimate, definitive edition, with that same Warner Bros 1.78 transfer from the other blus (but thankfully no longer interlaced), and a brand new 2k scan of the interpositive, framed back in the director's preferred aspect ratio of 1.66 on disc two.  ...But if their new transfer is so great, why bother with the old one?  Just for people who fell in love with the 1.78 framing?  And why stick their superior new transfer on disc 2 instead of 1?  Now I'm starting to worry about this new 2k scanner, something seems fishy here, doesn't it?
1) 1998 Criterion DVD 2) 2005 Warner Bros DVD
3) 2016 Scream Factory blu disc 1 4) 2016 Scream Factory blu disc 2
Honestly, this is one of those cases that makes you want to just drop your head on the desk and stop thinking about it.  But I'm pushing forward to get to the bottom of everything.  So, let's start with aspect ratios.  The Criterion disc is technically more like 1.64:1, but despite being a lower resolution, non-anamorphic framing, is attractively framed.  I think now's the right time to point out not only that Criterion's DVD (and their laserdisc) says right on the packaging that 1.66 is "David Cronenberg's preferred framing," but that their transfer was approved by both Cronenberg and director of photography Peter Suschitzy.  Cronenberg's approved some questionable releases in the past, so it's worth pointing out that this framing was also approved by the DP.

So okay.  People sometimes like to say that Warner Bros' DVD is actually 1.85:1 rather than 1.78:1 because it's slightly letterboxed.  The truth is actually exactly in the middle: it's 1.82:1 because if you look carefully at the first images, you'll notice it's also slightly pillar boxed, particularly on the left.  Scream's blus, then, are pretty much what they say they are: 1.78 on disc 1 and 1.67 on disc 2.  So the 1.82 and the 1.78 are different (Scream's is a little less tight horizontally and vertically), but pretty similar in all matters of importance.  And, at least in terms of framing, Scream's new transfer wins because it's the proper aspect ratio and in HD, right?  Well, unfortunately no, and here's where we start to see the controversial aspects bubble up.
↗That's Scream's 1.67 transfer transparently laid over Criterion's 1.66.  Obviously, there's not just .1 extra width, but a serious vertical shift.  Scream has a lot more up top, and crops a large chunk of the bottom.  So it's no longer a case of which of the two framings is preferable; they've actually made a whole new, 3rd framing situation.  And in these two shots it doesn't look too bad, but having watched both versions all the way through more than once, I can say I really prefer Criterion's framing.  There is just a whole lot of empty space over actor's heads in most close-ups, and the bottom always looks too tight.  It just feels wrong.  And while yes, Scream's disc says they've incorporated Cronenberg's preferred ratio, they don't mention the framing exactly, and they certainly don't say he or the DP approved their transfer.  So I'm just going to call it: Criterion's framing is right; Scream's is wrong.  But good luck living with that, because Criterion's framing is only available on a low-res, non-anamoprhic DVD.  Great.

And that's just the framing discussion.
1) 1998 Criterion DVD 2) 2005 Warner Bros DVD
3) 2016 Scream Factory blu disc 1 4) 2016 Scream Factory blu disc 2
Which one of these is not like the others?  Criterion and Warner Bros, one thing they agree on is that the night scenes are meant to have their blue filters.  But Scream's new scan seems to have forgotten that.  Whoops.  And their transfer is warmer in general - look at the earlier comparison of them standing in the restaurant - which is questionable, too.  But the night scenes are really far off.

So now, maybe you're thinking, well okay, I get it, Scream's new 2k scan is garbage and that's why it's been relegated to disc 2.  But it's not that simple.  Let's go back to their older transfer on disc 1.  It's not just framed at Cronenberg's un-preferred ratio, it's also got artificial sharpening and edge enhancement haloing.  That's not really Scream's fault, though; that's the crappy one Warner Bros provides, which prompted Scream to make a new scan in the first place.  And their new scan is a clearer, truer scan of the film.  It looks softer, but mostly because it doesn't have the artificial sharpening.  Also, both transfers have annoying sporadic bouts of shakiness - presumably telecine wobble.  But there's no decent release of the film without it, so that's just something we'll have to deal with.  So which of their two versions is the ideal one to watch?  It's really a case of six of one, one half dozen of the other.  They're both flawed, superior in some ways, inferior in others.  Just pick which one annoys you the least.  At least they've topped all the foreign blu-rays.

But before you finally wipe your brow, we haven't even gotten to the reason why both of Scream's discs are being recalled and replaced!
Criterion just gives us the original stereo mix in a decent sound Dolby track with no subtitle options.  Hey, it was an old disc.  Warner Bros gave us the stereo mix plus a new 5.1 mix, and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles.  Scream gives us both the stereo and 5.1 mixes in DTS-HD, plus optional English subs on both the disc 1 and 2 versions.  Yay, perfect, right?  Well, except their stereo mixes - again, on both discs - are reversed.  And the stereo mix is the critical, purist option, as opposed to the revisionist 5.1 mixes created for later home video releases.  So on these blu-rays, the sounds that are supposed to be coming out of the right channel come out of the left, and vice versa.  Thankfully, Scream has recognized this error and if you email them with your receipt, you can request new Version 2 discs that correct this.
incorrect disc 1 left; corrected disc 1 right.
Now, unlike some previous Scream Factory discs that were issued replacements, the new and old discs don't have helpful "V1"/ "V2" markings on the label.  The only way to tell the difference is by flipping them over and looking at their undersides, where the feint writing on the slim, inside ring will have different matrix numbers.  You may need a magnifying glass.  The incorrect blu-ray discs have "BVDL-1298840A1" and "BVDL-1298840B1 1" written on them, and the new ones have "CDV/CA BD161210641-1" and "CDV/CA BD16121065-2" on their inner rings.  Scream Factory shipped mine very quickly after I contacted them, arriving in paper envelopes packed inside a slim cardboard box.  Just to be clear, though, the only thing that's different between the original and replacement discs is that the stereo audio tracks have been corrected; nothing's been altered in terms of their transfers or anything else.
So now let's talk about extras.  There's a lot to get into here, too.  You can divide Scream Factory's extras into two categories: what it carried over from Warner Bros (everything) and their new, original content.  So, from the Warner Bros DVD is a decent but slow audio commentary by Jeremy Irons.  He's quite interesting, but starts running out of things to say about halfway through, and there are a lot of silent stretches in the second half.  There's also a collection of vintage EPK stuff, including brief on-set interviews with Irons, Cronenberg, co-writer Norman Snider and producer Marc Boyman, and a basic featurette that incorporates a lot of said interview footage.  It also has a few unique soundbites and more importantly some behind-the-scenes B-roll and a look at how the twinning footage was made, so it's worth going through.  That, plus the trailer, is what comes from Warner Bros.
What Scream Factory brings is a little off-center, i.e. no big pieces with the major players, but actually quite good.  They provide a good audio commentary by Cronenberg expert William Beard, which is a very informative, engaging listen, even if he snubs Fast Company (haha).  But even better are the four new video interviews they conduct.  Actress Heidi Von Palleske (she played Elliot's girlfriend) is very interesting and forthcoming, talking about how she never realized at the time that this film would be the pinnacle of her career, and Suschitsky talks about the look of the film and working with the Cronenbergs.  Then there's a thoroughly eccentric interview with Stephen Lack, who talks about his experience returning to acting for Dead Ringers, but mostly showcases his wild artwork.  You'd never guess what the slightly stiff Scanners star was like in real life.  And finally, there's a quite candid talk with special effects artist Gordon Smith who talks openly about not being Cronenberg's first choice and feeling spurned during the creative process.  But most excitingly is when she shows footage of a crazy, over the top special effects sequence that was shot but never used in the final film.  Scream's two-disc set also includes reversible artwork and a slipcover that for some reason has the MGM logo on its spine.
Irons and his stand-in, from the exclusive Criterion extras.
But what's missing is Criterion's extra material.  First and foremost they have by far the best audio commentary, with Cronenberg himself, as well as Irons, Suschitsky, editor Ronald Sanders and production designer Carol Spier.  It's basically several commentary sessions spliced together - they're not all in a room recording together - but that really helps make sure there's never a dull moment.  Cronenberg's commentary is of course the most enlightening, but whenever he might pause or lapse, another speaker can be cut in to fill the space with some important insight.  Irons says mostly all the same things on this that he said in the solo commentary, so if you have this version, you can skip his unless you're a die-hard fan panning for every single little nugget.

Then, a lot of what was on the Criterion edition is the same as what was on the Warner Bros and Scream discs... the vintage interviews, the featurette and the trailer.  But Criterion has had a long and detailed look at the twinning effects and motion control footage, where we get to see all the different stages the scenes went through.  There are also three large photo galleries including all the artwork used for the opening credits sequence, the original designs for the "tools for operating on mutant women," and even all the sculptures seen only in the background of the metal gallery in the film.  Criterion's DVD also came with a fold-out insert with notes by documentary filmmaker Chris Rodley.
So, where do we find ourselves at the end of all this?  Well, Scream Factory's 2-disc set is definitely the best blu-ray edition out there.  They definitely put in the effort to please everybody.  Their new extras are great, they have the best HD image of the film out there (whichever transfer you wind up going with), and thanks to their replacement program, they have the best audio as well.  You'll definitely want to hang onto your Criterion discs for their exclusive special features.  It's also still the only release - well, that and the 1998 Anchor Bay disc - with the correct framing; but are you really going to watch a low-res, 4x3 DVD in 2017?  I could see holding out for a more ideal blu-ray edition down the line.  Arrow would probably be the most likely bet for a proper restoration.  But even then, they'd have to be willing to make another, all-new scan that in all likelihood they'd only be able to release in the UK (since Scream has obviously already licensed it for the US), so I don't hold out a lot of hope.  As headache-inducing as it is just to parse out all of the issues associated with Scream Factory's release, it's still the best we've got; and that's not likely to change anytime soon.

Popatopolis, The Jim Wynorski Story Is Terrific!

Guys, guys!  If you haven't seen Popatopolis yet, the 2009 documentary about B-movie director Jim Wynorski, you must.  It's so good.  And listen, I didn't rush to see it either.  It popped up on my radar because, as you can tell from this site, I'm pretty big into cult films and documentaries.  But I wouldn't call myself a Jim Wynorski fan.  I'm a Chopping Mall fan, and there are elements I appreciate from a few of his other films... Everybody should probably watch Lost Empire once in their lives.  But usually, honestly, seeing Wynorski's name attached to a project means not for me.  It means renting Evil Toons and finding out the evil cartoons have about ten seconds of screen-time in the whole movie.  It means cynical, direct-to-cable TV softcore porn with titles like Busty Cops & The Bare Wench Project (not to be confused with The Erotic Witch Project), and bewildering, unconnected sequels to franchises that weren't so great in the first place.  I mean, who knew the Ghoulies franchise could sink so much farther than it started out?
Plus the title (if you don't get it, just read the "let's pop some tops" quote from Wynorski plastered right across the top of the poster), trailer and even the film's opening scenes make it look kind of a like a cheap, misogynistic exercise, inviting us to laugh at the airhead babes of Hollywood B-movies.  From the very beginning where Jim repeatedly calls an actress auditioning for a role in his latest "erotic thriller" stupid for showing up late and neglecting to bring a resume, to him showing off the Howard Stern books in his pantry, I was buckled in for a fairly sleazy experience.  But this film is really an insightful, compelling piece of filmmaking.
This film really comes at us from two angles.  One half is an immediate documentary of Wynorski making his latest feature (at the time), The Witches of Breastwick, which he is determined to complete in three days.  The documentarians are on set the whole time, and it's a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at a level of filmmaking that we don't usually (ever?) get to see.  This is very far removed from the 4-hour Prometheus blu-ray doc.  As you can imagine, a lot can go wrong shooting a feature in three days with plenty of nudity out in the woods, and we get a very funny, thorough first-hand perspective of that experience.  Even if The Witches of Breastwick is the last sort of film you'd ever find yourself watching, the 'making of' is an entirely different, fascinating experience.
And that's just one half of what's on offer here.  The other is a career-spanning retrospective of Wynorski, with clips from his biggest films, interviews with his biggest peers and collaborators from Andy Sidaris to Julie Strain to Roger Corman, and even a visit to his mother's house.  Popatopolis does a great job in finding the joy in his body of work and unraveling the layers of an ultimately charming curmudgeon who clearly loves film and takes pride in doing the best he can with the dwindling budgets he's given to work with.  There's some sad discussion about the death of roles for softcore B-movie actresses who are being replaced by hardcore pornstars that don't have a problem doing whatever they're asked.
And that brings up another great strength of this picture.  This is no puff piece.  I mean, sure the cast and crew complain about the hardships and stress they're under making a film in three days.  In a scene where several of the actresses are reading over the script, Monique Parent comments that the man who wrote this clearly hates women.  And Julie K. Smith replies, yeah, when they start drinking "the anger comes out," later pointing out where the stage directions refer to her as "the cow."  But beyond just those candid little moments, people like Smith and Corman really open up about their long histories working with Wynorski, and the disappointments he's had in his career.  Corman talks about the popular "I'm sick of all these Jim Wynorski movies" reaction his films were getting in the 90s.  It's certainly an affectionate look, and you'll probably come out of this liking Wynorski more than you did going in, but it's far more honest than your usual DVD documentary where everyone answers softball questions and calls each other brilliant.  In Popatopolis, Jim calls everybody stupid.
So, the 2009 DVD from Imaginaut isn't the most amazing PQ to look at, but I imagine it's about as good as the film can be presented.  During the film we watch Jim shoot his film with an old HD camcorder on DV tapes, and we know the filmmakers are using smaller cameras.  So I think the image is what it is and that's why there's no blu-ray version.  Still, it's a fine DVD presentation: anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1) with no interlacing or other issues.  This is just a micro-budget 2009 digital film, this DVD is probably exactly the same image that they screened at festivals.  Some shots would've certainly looked nicer with a more modern camera to add more detail and gloss, and as an often impromptu documentary, sometimes the lighting was just whatever they could grab in the moment.  But even on my large screen TV, it still looked fine.  It even has a 5.1 mix with optional English and Portuguese subtitles.  Care was taken to do this release right.
And that's especially evident in the special features.  You're really going to want to pick up the DVD as opposed to just catching this on some streaming site.  First of all, there are two audio commentaries.  One in by the filmmaking team, and it's pretty solid; they're certainly in good spirits.  Also in good spirits are actresses Monique Parent and Antonia Dorian, but their commentary is very skippable.  They have little to say, leaving long stretches of silence or simply laughing at the film, and it also doesn't help that their commentary is mixed so low that it's often very hard to hear them over the sound of the film "in the background."

But more importantly than either commentary are the deleted scenes.  There's some great stuff in here, including interviews with some people who never even made it into the finished film.  There's also a festival talk where Jim goes into some great stories working on his biggest films, and during the Deathstalker 2 clip, we suddenly cut to a whole exclusive interview with its star John Terlesky, which is exclusive to just that deleted scene.  And there are more deleted scenes tucked away as easter eggs, which are also great (Julie Strain takes you on a tour of her house, dances for us, and talks to her maid who once cameo'd in a Wynorski film), so you should definitely hunt those down, too.  Finally, there's the trailer and a cute Chopping Mall-related video where a remote controlled killbot travels around the UK promoting an upcoming screening.
Now, you might've already taken a look and been disappointed that Popatopolis seems to be out of print and selling for $50 (as of this writing at least) on Amazon.  Happily though, this DVD is still available brand new from the film's official website popatopolis.com for just $14.99.  I was a little worried it might be a long abandoned deal, like the I Don't Know Jack DVD offer on jacknance.com, but I took a gamble and ordered it myself just a couple weeks ago, so I'm happy to report they're still fully operational.  They even threw in an autographed postcard.  I really can't imagine any of you guys who've found yourselves on this site not appreciating this one.  I would honestly rate this even higher than Electric Boogaloo or other, recent popular docs along these lines.

The Impossible Quest for a Proper Tabloid (DVD/ Blu-ray Comparison)

Collecting DVDs shouldn't be this hard.  Tabloid is a fairly recent Errol Morris documentary that first debuted on DVD in 2011 from IFC Films.  It's super entertaining.  But here's the thing: the DVD itself?  It's not so great.  So I decided to try my hand at importing, and it turns out - with this title at least - you just can't win.

But you can at least do better than the US DVD.
It goes without saying that an Errol Morris documentary is a great documentary; but in recent years, he's been doing a lot of very serious, sometimes rather depressing, war films.  However, as Morris put it in his director's statement, "Tabloid is a return to my favorite genre - sick, sad and funny."  It's a completely crazy story about a beauty queen who fell in love with a Mormon, hired a pilot and a couple of heavies to sneak into the UK, kidnap him at gunpoint for a weekend of love-making and then smuggle him out of the country.  And there's no way you'd guess all the crazy turns this true story takes.  I certainly won't spoil it for you here, but it's a real "you can't make these things up" kind of show.
The only release we have of this film in the US is that 2011 IFC Films DVD.  I had it pre-ordered well before it came out, but after being disappointed by the disc, I figured there had to be something better in another region.  2012 saw new DVDs in the UK and Australia, so I went with Dogwoof's UK disc, because it promised a unique set of extras.  It was an improvement but still a disappointment, so later on I put out the feelers for another search.  Surely a recent film this good has to be available in HD, right?  And sure enough, there was a 2013 blu-ray released in the Netherlands from Remains In Light (yes, that's the company's name) that even seemed to include the UK special features.  Perfect, right?  Third time's the charm?  Nope.  Here's why.
2011 US DVD top; 2012 UK DVD mid; 2013 NL blu bottom.
Gah!  Look at the interlacing in that first pic!  How does that happen on a modern day release from a legit, mainstream studio?  The answer, of course: it doesn't.  Clearly the devil had to have been involved.  Moving down to Dogwoof's UK disc and thankfully that's fixed.  It's decidedly darker (look at the "Manacled Mormon" block in the second shots), with some slightly crushed blacks; but otherwise it's not too bad. But that's alright, the blu-ray should be the best of both worlds and take care of all of those issues, plus boost us up to a crisper HD image, right?  And it does.  It's pretty great, except... what?  It's in the completely wrong aspect ratio.  The DVDs are in their original, very wide 2.40:1 ratio, but the blu-ray, well, it claims to be 1.85:1 on the case, but is even wrong about that, coming in at 1.78:1.  It's a bit of a split, partially opening up the mattes to give us more vertical information, yet also cutting off some of the sides.

Audio-wise, the US DVD comes through alright, giving us a solid 5.1 mix with optional English and Spanish subs.  Dogwoof gives us the same, minus any subtitle option.  Remains In Light gives us two audio tracks, Dolby 5.1 and DTS-HD 5.1, both in English, so that's nice.  Their only subtitle options are Dutch and French, though.
So let's talk special features.  The US DVD has nothing but the trailer, which is another reason why I was so keen to search elsewhere.  The UK DVD promises multiple things, as you can still see on the label's official page and the back of the case, including:
* Trailer
* Director Statement
* Deleted Scenes
* Extended Interviews
* Additional Trailers
But that's pretty misleading.  The director's statement is just a short bit of text written on the inside of the case, not an on-disc extra of any kind, and the deleted scenes and extended interviews are both referring to the same brief things.  There are four (total) deleted scenes, which are extra little clips from the interviews. The DVD packaging says the extras are "15 min. approx," but they must be including all the bonus trailers and ads, because it really totals five and a half minutes, generously eight including the film's trailer.  I prefer to assume that the DVD was originally going to have more extras that got pulled at the last minute, and just wound up in the disc's notes, rather than Dogwoof deliberately trying to trick buyers into thinking they had more substantial features than they actually did, but either way it's kind of a bummer.
deleted scene
With that said, though, a few extras beat no extras; and I'm always happy to see deleted scenes from Errol Morris films.  The ones included on Standard Operating Procedure and the First Person solo episode DVD were amazing.  These, well, one is quite compelling, but the other three don't add much at all.  I'm glad to have them, though.  And yes, these four extra scenes are also included on the blu, as is the trailer and some more bonus trailers.  I should also point out that the Dogwoof DVD comes in a slim case made entirely of recycled materials.  The design's alright, but it doesn't look too pretty spine-out on a shelf.
Remain In Light's disc is the only blu-ray release of Tabloid in the world, so basically you have to choose.  Which one is going to bother you less: watching this film in SD instead of HD, or watching it in the wrong aspect ratio?  Whatever your answer to that question is will determine whether the Dogwoof or Remain In Light disc is the right one for you.  Whatever you do, though, don't get the US DVD from IFC Films.  That's the worst.