Home for Christmas

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful music; amateurish production
Review: I love the Christmas music of Johnny Mathis--it is among the very best ever recorded--so I thought this would be a sure thing. Unfortunately, for Johnny the artist and us the viewers, this video is a mixed bag. Johnny and everyone concerned are lip-synching the whole time. Sometimes this is very obvious, sometimes not. The sets are very pretty and Christmasy, but the background actors, choirs, and the bits of business they are given to do are very stagey. At times I could find myself forgetting this, at others I found it quite intrusive and hard to ignore. Johnny and his singers were at times quite wooden, other times okay--as I said at the beginning, a mixed bag. Had this been prepared for a network television special, it would never have passed muster. As it is, you can tell that Columbia didn't want to put much money, time, or effort into the production other than to make it look quite Christmasy and inviting. Unfortunately for all concerned, the whole thing comes off looking rather cheesy. The transfer to DVD is typical of its type and age: a small-budget televison/video production from 1990. The image is adequately sharp, but not spectacular in detail. All that aside, I still enjoyed it, BUT buyer beware.

Rating:
Summary: Johnny Mathis Home For Christmas
Review: Johnny Mathis Home For Christmas looks a lot better on this dvd then it did on the vhs tape.The grain is gone.The video is sharp but it's not as sharp as Johnny Mathis Live By Request.The sound is ok but it's not the surround sound that was on Johnny Mathis Live By Request dvd.The Christmas scenes on this are pretty.The colors were kind of dull thou and the picture is a little darker than the vhs.The menus are animated and show clips of Johnny Mathis Videos.One such selection is I'll Be Home For Christmas.There are no bonus features on this disc however there is chapter stops.Also there is no insert in the dvd jewel box but they didn't need one since they have the song list listed on the back.You can play thru the whole program or just pick you favorite song to play.Here is the songlist on this dvd.

1)I'll Be Home For Christmas
2)Every Christmas Eve/Giving(Santa's Song)
3)O Holy Night
4)It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
5)Toyland
6)The Christmas Song
7)Caroling Caroling/Happy Holiday
8)What Child Is This?
9)Winter Wonderland
10)Silent Night Holy Night
11)When A Child Is Born
12)White Christmas

If your a Johnny Mathis fan you should pick this one up.I recommend it.Now that Legacy has released this on dvd I'd like to see them reissiue Tony Bennett's A Family Christmas.

Rating:
Summary: They Should Have Let This One Die
Review: Sorry, but I must protest. I'm dumbfounded as to why they would release this disgraceful embarrassment when I thought we'd seen the last of it. For years before this thing came out, Johnny Mathis had only been associated with quality, but around 1990 they decide to slap this high school Christmas production together. It's beyond cheese, it was stupid having a 50-something Mathis lip-sych to his own 20-something voice on videotape. At least when he was on Ed Sullivan doing the stagey stuff he actually WAS a twentysomething. I hated the VHS when it came out, I was embarrassed for Johnny Mathis, whose reputation for quality had been breached in one fell swoop, and I'm disgusted that they chose not to let this one remain out of production. Things won't change unless the people show Columbia that we're smart enough to know that Mathis doesn't have to sound like a 20-something for us to enjoy his music, that he can still sing the holiday classics in his present-day voice and sing them well, thank you very much, and that we want a NEW holiday video done LIVE with his current voice. Put the man in a real church with real musicians and let him sing with his REAL voice. Well, maybe I'm the only one who wants that, but I don't care. The only reason this even gets two stars is because if you turn the video portion off you don't have a bad Christmas album, considering none of the great original Christmas songs he's done since 1990 are on it...hm, probably should remove a star for that. What I recommend: buy Merry Christmas, buy Give Me Your Love for Christmas, buy Christmas Eve with Johnny Mathis, buy The Christmas Album from two years ago, find Listen It's Christmas and The Sounds of Christmas on eBay and buy it, but do NOT buy this sorry excuse for a holiday video, whether VHS or DVD. Ed Sullivan has some great excerpts of a young Johnny Mathis doing Christmas songs, I suggest buying his collection for those who need to live on memory lane.