This is three-day-old news by now, but I haven’t seen much commentary on this story.  The Adventures of Tintin, a co-production between Canada’s Nelvana and France’s Ellipsanime, will see its 39 episodes released on DVD through Shout! Factory.  This “multi-year agreement” will exploit the upcoming 2011 release of The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, the Steven Spielberg/Peter Jackson/Weta Digital motion-capture film.

This news is notable for the American company attached to the Adventures of Tintin DVD releases.  Shout! Factory has released Canadian content before, most notably SCTV, ReBoot and Transformers: Beast Wars.

I don’t usually post obituary notices on URBMN, but this obituary is appropriate enough for here.  John Callahan, the quadriplegic cartoonist/musician/satirist, died July 24, 2010 from complications resulting from a 2009 surgery.  He was 59.

John Callahan has had two shows based on his works, both from Nelvana.  Pelswick aired from 2000-02.  Nickelodeon broadcast the show in the United States, while CBC handled the Canadian airings.

John Callahan’s Quads! is Callahan’s adult show, which first aired on Teletoon and Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service from 2001-02.  Quads! is notable as one of the first Flash-animated series to air on television.

I’m admittedly most familiar with Callahan through Pelswick and Quads!  He’s infamous for his one-panel cartoons.  Callahan was not afraid of offending anyone.  This was balanced with blunt honesty about his struggles with alcoholism, even after the 1972 car accident which severed his spinal cord.

Here’s a link to a Cartoon Brew post about Callahan.  Said link contains I Think I Was an Alcoholic, a short animated film of Callahan’s from 1993.

Frankly, I Think I Was an Alcoholic captures Callahan’s essence much better than either Pelswick or Quads!  Pelswick and Quads! are serviceable shows, yet hardly essential.  I also dog Teletoon for reairing Quads! way too much, since the show does not hold up in reruns.

Callahan’s life is too varied for me to properly eulogize.  Portland, Oregon citizens do this far better than I ever could.

Spliced! (Teletoon: 7:00 PM ET/PT starting April 8, 2010) is part of an unwelcome trend in Teletoon’s programming.  Like The Dating Guy, Spliced! has premiered outside of its home country months before its Canadian debut.

I don’t understand why Teletoon does this.  Why withhold programming for so long?  I’m not saying I want the fourth season of The Venture Bros. the same day as [adult swim], but Teletoon has a terrible habit of letting fine wine age way after its time.  Why debut Spliced! in Latin America, of all places?

Wait, it’s the television industry.  Screw me for thinking common sense exists there.

I’m also aware that show creators Simon Racioppa and Richard Elliott have written for cartoon also-rans like Mr. Meaty, Best Ed, Pig City and Grossology.  Screw it.  I like Spliced!  It’s one of the best things going for Teletoon right now.

I realize how sweeping a statement that is, but I defend it.  Sometimes, Teletoon airs an obvious kids’ cartoon like Wayside, Johnny Test and the George of the Jungle remake.  The Total Drama franchise, Stoked and 6teen are teen-oriented sitcoms, doubling as decent ratings-grabbers for Cartoon Network.

What Teletoon hasn’t attempted is a classic Nicktoons-style show, where adults and children can watch the show on different levels.  Spliced! is currently the closest to that ideal, taking the mantle over from Jimmy Two Shoes.  Spliced! isn’t on the level of Ren & Stimpy or Bob Clampett, but few cartoons are.

“Honorary Freak” is a good enough introduction to the show.  Spliced! establishes Peri (Rob Stefaniuk) and Entrée (Joe Pingue), two of the many mutants on Keep Away Island.  The inaugural short’s plot centers around Patricia (Katie Crown), a platypus and the only normal on the island.

Patricia feels lonely because she isn’t a mutant.  Peri and Entrée decide to cheer her up, mainly by avalanching her with flowers and forcing her to fight in the Mayo-Dome.  Peri and Entrée also rap, which isn’t needed and feels out-of-place.

“Honorary Freak” lays bare Spliced!‘s desire to be SpongeBob SquarePants.  Peri and Entrée are SpongeBob and Patrick.  Patricia is a monotreme Sandy Cheeks.  Mind you, Peri and Entrée aren’t as annoying as SpongeBob and Patrick, as P&E aren’t nearly as oblivious.

“Come to the Dorkside” has its moments.  The friendship-related Aesop is a little ham-fisted, but it’s balanced out by some brainwashing gags and an obligatory reference to A Clockwork Orange.  Mister Smarty Smarts (Mike Kiss) and Octocat are Spliced!‘s nominal villains, Mister Smarty Smarts filling the Plankton role well.

I hope Spliced! sticks around.  Any show that has a male character squeeze milk out his udders deserves at least some mention.  Having typed that, I hope the lactation fetishists don’t embrace Spliced!  God knows they’re turned on enough by Rocko’s Modern Life and Cow and Chicken.

Spliced!, a Nelvana cartoon, makes its Canadian debut on Teletoon April 1, 2010.  The cartoon debuts 8:30 PM ET/PT, after five episodes of Johnny Test.  A repeat of the debut airs April 4 at 8:30 PM ET/PT.  Spliced! settles into a Thursday night 7:00 PM ET/PT time slot on April 8.

Spliced! is about a bunch of genetic recombinants stranded on a desert island, as they try to build a civilization from the ground up.  Characters include Entrée, a cow-pig-chicken-tuna-shrimp thing that walks on its udder.  There’s also a dolphin/chimp/Jack Russell terrier with three Internet degrees.  Yeah, it’s that kind of show.

Spliced! has already debuted on Jetix in Latin America, having first aired anywhere April 20, 2009.  Spliced!‘s brief run in the United States was on ION’s digital subchannel qubo, from September 19 to October 24, 2009.

Matt Ferguson directs this show.  He’s responsible for Harold Rosenbaum, Chartered Accountant Extreme, a fairly spot-on parody of limited-animation cartoons.  Viewers may remember Harold Rosenbaum from YTV’s Funpak (2005)…not that many people have watched Funpak.

Spliced! could very well outstrip every other Canadian show on Teletoon’s pre-watershed schedule, which isn’t hard when it’s flanking Johnny Test, Wayside and Stoked.  I’ll admit to liking Jimmy Two Shoes a bit (a bit), but I have a good feeling about Spliced!  Here’s a clip parodying The More You Know:

---

Dog City: The Movie, which originally aired as an hour-long 1989 episode of The Jim Henson Hour, will be released on Region 1 DVD on June 8, 2010.  Lionsgate Home Entertainment will release the disc, as part of its arrangement with The Jim Henson Company.

The “movie” is a film noir spoof with lots of bad puns, not all of them dog-related.  Main protagonist Ace Yu is looking for his uncle’s killer, Bugsy Them.  Yeah, it’s that kind of spoof.  Jim Henson won an Emmy for this episode, his first and last as a director.

Dog City: The Movie has been on DVD before, albeit in Region 2 form.  This will be Dog City‘s North American debut.

Both DVD versions of Dog City: The Movie retain appearances by Rowlf the Dog, even though The Walt Disney Company owns Rowlf.  Rowlf is a framing device, so he can’t be avoided.

Special features include a “behind-the-scenes photo gallery, original concept art, ‘and more!’”  It reads like the standard set of extras, not that I’m expecting much more from Lionsgate Home Entertainment.  At least Lionsgate is releasing Henson’s titles, no matter how esoteric they are.

This news is only tangentially related to Canadian television.  Dog City (1992-95), one of Nelvana’s better 1990s shows, is an indirect spinoff of the Dog City special.  I have pondered whether the Dog City series will see release.

As an aside, Amazon.com has the entirety of Dog City on video-on-demand.  There’s a fair swath of Henson-related product on demand.  Truth be known, I’m surprised Dog City has its entire run on VOD.  I don’t remember the show being that popular, but you know, nostalgia.

Dog City: The Movie could spark renewed interest in the Dog City cartoon.  We’re seeing The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley (!) on DVD – one episode, but come on.  If that show can waft to home video, Dog City‘s chances aren’t so bad.

Two years after it was first announced, the Teletoon Pilot Project will finally be streamed online through teletoon.sympatico.ca and thedetour.ca.  teletoon.sympatico.ca will contain the WebHD stream, while those flocking to thedetour.ca will have to make do with standard definition.

French-speaking viewers can go to detour.sympatico.ca (WebHD) and ledetour.ca (SD.)  One pilot will debut every Friday starting October 23, 2009.

The ten pilots will also be screened at the 2009 Ottawa International Animation Festival from tonight until Saturday, October 17.  Each screening starts at 11:30 PM, with three to four pilots being screened each night.  The titles being screened are as follows:

Ninjamaica (Lenz Entertainment: October 16)
Angora Napkin (Mugisha Enterprises: October 15)
Dunce Bucket (Nunchucks Pilot Inc./Fresh TV Inc.: October 16)
Nerdland (Cuppa Coffee Studios: October 15)
Drop Dead Gorgeous (CINEMARIA: October 17)
The Wireless Family (Encore Television: October 15)
Celebutard Nation (Nelvana: October 16)
Space Knights (Fatkat Animation: October 17)
Chinatown Cops (Portfolio Entertainment: October 17)
Fugget About It (9 Story Entertainment: October 16)

Off the bat, I know one show might not make it to series, Space Knights.  Fatkat Animation is dead, to the point that it liquidated a foosball table.  Fatkat founder Gene Fowler has since founded Loogaroo.

It’s nice to see Teletoon finally go ahead with the Pilot Project, although I’d like to see conventional television debuts down the line.  Teletoon recently greenlit Crash Canyon for Teletoon at Night, so it’s taken steps to pump new adult animation into the pipeline.  It’s about time.  One can’t subsist on a diet of Clone High and Tripping the Rift forever.

Note: as of the time I publish this, the sympatico.ca sites are not yet active.  You’d think Teletoon would have the sites up before prepping its media release, but no.  This channel is goofy at times.

Class of the Titans Season One, Volume One?!  The show has its fans, but why split the season like that?  This isn’t like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe where each season has at least 65 episodes, so I don’t understand the strategy.

I think Class of the Titans is a fairly silly series – descendants of Greek heroes fight mythological monsters controlled by some higher power.  Replace the hero spawn with teens who can turn into dinosaurs.  Swap “mythological monsters” with “mutated animals.”  Replace “higher power” with “shapeshifting velociraptor.”  There, you have DinoSquad.  People have been abusing the basic building blocks of adventure cartoons since forever.

A 6teen set.  I actually like this show, although I’m not crazy about it since I’m not part of its target audience.  The characters on 6teen have personalities beyond their initial stereotypes and talk like actual people some of the time.  6teen‘s not perfect – very few shows have correctly depicted the lives of teenagers, and the characters on 6teen are all mallrats.  The show’s more fun than Class of the Titans, but that goes without saying.

Here’s a set I missed for the first Canadian TV-on-DVD post.  It concerns Durham County, a show that appeared on The Movie Network in 2007 before being given a run on Global earlier this year.  I should really check that show out one of these days.  It sounds good.

Funny how Anchor Bay’s Canadian division is putting this out.  I wasn’t even aware Anchor Bay had a Canadian division.  I’m out of the loop.

Various recent Canadian children’s shows have DVDs out – Di-Gata Defenders, Ruby Gloom, Grossology and Jane and the Dragon.  I’m not crazy about any of these releases, although I can’t comment on Grossology and Ruby Gloom since I haven’t watched those shows.

Di-Gata Defenders, though?  It’s like Digimon meets Avatar with anything that made those two shows watchable bled dry.  That show needed the lead characters to transform into dragons.  They could have fought evil Internet viruses controlled by an evil Steve Wozniak!

My word, I think I just described the plot of Code Monkeys!

This isn’t specifically related to TV-on-DVD news, but io9.com has an article up asking whether The Starlost was the worst science fiction program ever made.  The complete series DVD set came out September 30 through VCI.  The show aired on CTV during the 1973-74 season and is one of Harlan Ellison’s ill-fated excursions into television.

Amazon.com has this at $45, which sounds exorbitant.  Wait a year, I’m sure The Starlost will be at least half off by then.

I’ve been reviewing some TV-on-DVD releases for “my sister’s site at http://www.currentmoviereviews.net/,” as I’ve been saying to publicists for far too long.  It would be nice if the reviews I have written for her would be on the site, but I have written them and they might be reworked for sweetposer.com soon, just to prove to people that I’m not continuing to blow smoke out my ass.  Also: that I actually post reviews here.

Canadian TV-on-DVD releases tend to be overlooked.  I remember first noticing that John Callahan’s Quads! had a season box set when I was doing Christmas shopping at Wal-Mart two years ago.  Granted, it’s John Callahan’s Quads! and the audience for sketchily drawn, poorly-animated cartoons about disabled assholes isn’t that big.  Canadian TV-on-DVD titles are far more likely to hit the bargain bins or be heavily discounted than American fare in this country, in my opinion.  When I look in discount stores like Giant Tiger and Liquidation World, I’ve seen titles like Atomic Betty and Jimmy Macdonald’s Canada there.  Is it because Canadian titles are almost always shit or are the wrong titles being released?

Maybe Canadian TV-on-DVD is just a weakly tapped market.  I’m amazed there isn’t a Four on the Floor box set, since there are Frantics fans out there.  I can see a market for The Tommy Hunter Show, and there are even hardcore fans of The Vacant Lot.  CODCO has yet to see a release.  There’s a lot of good stuff left untouched.  Even the titles that are out on DVD seem to suffer from poor marketing.  I didn’t know the first two seasons of This Hour Has 22 Minutes – make no mistake, that show was great in its early years – were even out on DVD until I received an e-mail from CBCShop.ca selling the first two seasons for $19.99 each.  Did CBC broadcast commercials for the box sets last year?  It’s not like I’ve gone out of my way to watch the Gavin Crawford/Geri Hall/Mark Critch era of the show, since I only watch shows I find funny.

All I have to say is, I’m glad there’s a TVShowsonDVD.com, otherwise my knowledge of home entertainment-related Canadiana would be even smaller than it is now.

Announcement for the complete series set of My Pet Monster.  Global used to air this show for years on end, since Nelvana produced it and the show counted as Canadian content.  I’m sure there are fans of this show, but this is the sort of title I wish would not be released on DVD.  kaBOOM!’s releasing a couple of these industrials lately – this and Tales from the Cryptkeeper.  Meanwhile, other Nelvana titles like Eek! the Cat and Beetlejuice lack proper DVD releases – the 20th anniversary Beetlejuice DVD has three episodes from its spinoff cartoon, which is inadequate.  Those two titles need more of a DVD release than a show based on a fad toy that was constantly rerun on Saturday afternoons for at least ten years.  I have memories of My Pet Monster that I wish would erode faster.  I want to forget about Mr. Hinkle and his dog Princess.

Review of Friday the 13th: The Series.

Corner Gas Season 5.  This is one of the rare Canadian series that’s marketed properly, given decent season releases and has television commercials advertising it.  I’ve never liked this show, but it has its fans and it’s being sold the right way.

Grantray-Lawrence titles Spider-Man and The Marvel Superheroes in grab-bag DVD sets.  I question the legality of these releases – I’m sure Disney owns the rights to the 1967 Spider-Man series and it put the entire three-season run out on DVD a few years ago, so I’m not sure what’s going on here.

Both seasons of The Tudors out on Blu-Ray November 11.  The second season of The Tudors is coming out in standard DVD format on the same day as the Blu-Ray releases, at least in Canada.

The Border‘s first season and Robson Arms’ third season on DVD.  Video Service Corp. seems to be the company that best exploits the Canadian TV-on-DVD market.

Mutant X and BeastMaster complete-run DVD sets cancelled.  This is due to ADV Films losing the home video rights to Tribune Entertainment’s shows, and aside from Farscape this isn’t much of a loss.  I always felt releasing these shows was a lousy way to wean the company off anime and manga.  I know the anime market is not nearly what it was a few years ago, but ADV could have done a better job of diversifying.

Also coming out in November and December: Fraggle Rock complete series (November 4), Super Dave Super Stunt Spectacular Volume One (November 25)