Time Out New York, though reluctant to use the word "masterpiece" for fear of contributing to its overuse, says Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, earning a perfect six stars, is worthy of the word: "[T]he writer-director’s attempt to map the moment when bootstrap mentality curdles into cutthroat corporate culture earns the title. There hasn’t been a more breathtaking, damning portrait of frontier paranoia since [Robert Altman's] McCabe & Mrs. Miller."

There Will Be Blood has been named one of the year's best films by the American Film Institute. The creative team behind the film will receive the AFI Award in Los Angeles on January 11.

CBS Sunday Morning's film critic David Edelstein counts Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood as "the jewel" among holiday releases. Edelstein calls the film "a psychodrama with the epic scale of an Old Testament parable," and says Daniel Day-Lewis, in the lead role, "looms as large as the derricks that dominate the unruly landscape." Even the film's already-controversial final scene is, in Edelstein's opinion, "brilliant," all part of the "mad American classic" Anderson has created.

In its review of the new big-screen version of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, Rolling Stone calls the film "a thriller-diller from start to finish: scary, monstrously funny and melodically thrilling ... This Sweeney is a bloody wonder, intimate and epic, horrific and heart-rending as it flies on the wings of Sondheim's most thunderously exciting score." The review exclaims that the "brilliantly conceived and executed film moves from one highlight to another."

There Will Be Blood has been nominated for the four top awards by the London Critics' Circle: Best Film, Best Director and Screenplay for Paul Thomas Anderson, and Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis. Sweeney Todd's Helena Bonham Carter also earned a nom for British Actress of the Year. The 28th annual awards will be presented in a ceremony in London on February 8 benefiting the children's charity NSPCC. 

Nominations for the 2008 Golden Globe Awards have just been announced, and among the nominees for Best Picture are There Will Be Blood (Drama) and Sweeney Todd (Comedy or Musical). Sweeney received three other nominations as well: Tim Burton for Best Director and Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter for Best Actor and Actress, Comedy or Musical. Also nominated in the performance category was Daniel Day-Lewis for Best Actor, Drama, for his starring role in There Will Be Blood.

Tune in to the Playbill Radio show Playbill Presents tonight at 7 PM ET to hear Sweeney Todd producers John Logan (also the film's screenwriter) and Richard Zanuck (both pictured at right) weigh in on working with Stephen Sondheim in adapting the composer's classic musical for the Tim Burton–directed film.

While calling the Oscars at this point is still the gamble of the year, the Guardian's Jeremy Kay decided to get in on the game after seeing Paul Thomas Anderson's "deliriously barmy tale" There Will Be Blood. "If the white knuckles of Daniel Day-Lewis aren't squeezed around the lead actor statuette come February 24, 2008," writes Kay, "I'll be stupefied. Which is precisely how I felt after watching his performance as Daniel Plainview, a masterful amalgam of determination and loneliness that was so utterly compelling I crushed the hand of the poor soul sitting next to me out of sheer terror."

Nominees for the 2007 Critics Choice Awards have been unveiled, and Sweeney Todd and There Will Be Blood are represented across six categories. Both films were nominated by the Broadcast Film Critics Association for Best Picture, and both films' stars, Johnny Depp and Daniel Day-Lewis, respectively, received noms for Best Actor. Sweeney also grabbed nominations for Best Director (Tim Burton), Best Acting Ensemble, and Best Young Actor for Edward Sanders. There Will Be Blood adds a Best Composer nomination for Jonny Greenwood's score.

"It's bloody wonderful." That's how David Ansen describes the Tim Burton–directed Sweeney Todd in the latest issue of Newsweek. Ansen finds the film to be faithful to the Stephen Sondheim musical, itself the source of "some of the most beautiful, witty and disturbing songs in the musical-theater canon." Time says: "Burton and Depp infuse the brilliant cold steel of Stephen Sondheim's score with a burning passion." The Hollywood Reporter says that "the show couldn't have fallen into better hands ... Depp is a Sweeney Todd for the ages." Billboard exclaims: "Johnny Depp is pretty much perfect."

Johnny Depp and Tim Burton grace the cover of New York magazine's Best of 2007 issue this week, which wittily names the duo's film version of Sweeney Todd "The Best Serial Killer Musical Ever!" Inside the magazine is a more serious evaluation from critic David Edelstein of "Tim Burton's brilliantly intense adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's great musical." Edelstein compliments Depp and his co-star Helena Bonham Carter for their "riveting" performances and Burton for filming the duo "with such loving intimacy that their fever takes hold."

The LA Film Critics Association has named There Will Be Blood the best picture of the year and its director, Paul Thomas Anderson, and star, Daniel Day-Lewis, best in their categories as well. Now, critics on the East Coast are adding their praise, too. In this week's New Yorker, David Denby calls the film "an enthralling and powerfully eccentric American epic ... magnificent."