The joining of director Tim Burton with Stephen Sondheim's songs and lyrics in the new film adaptation of Sweeney Todd is "the perfect marriage of maker and material," says the perfect-ten PopMatters review. They have come together to create "the best film of 2007. It is an outright masterpiece, a work of bravura craftsmanship by a man whose been preparing for this creative moment all his directorial life."

Jonny Greenwood’s score for There Will Be Blood and the Sweeney Todd film soundtrack have both made the list of the Allmusic’s favorite soundtracks from 2007. "Greenwood’s tense, coiled score mirrors the eerie emotional undercurrent to the film, pulling suppressed feelings to the surface, often with an almost operatic sense of drama," says Allmusic. "This is magnificently unsettling music, whether it's used within the film or heard on its own terms—either way, it's impossible to forget after it's been heard."

The Baltimore Sun calls Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd "ineluctably involving," pointing to the lead actors, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, for their ability to "bring superhuman intensity to the fallible creatures in a gory fable." The Sun gives the film an A- and credits Depp for filling Sweeney with "a spectral intensity from the outset. And when he clicks with Bonham Carter's Mrs. Lovett as a potential mate ... an aberrant electricity leaps out between them."

There Will Be Blood receives an A review from E!'s Chris Farnsworth, who cites the film's "compelling" story and a "fascinating performance" by Daniel Day-Lewis in the lead role.

There Will Be Blood tops the list of the indieWIRE poll of more than 100 critics looking at the year's best in cinema. The film earned the critics' votes for Best Picture, Best Director and Screenplay for Paul Thomas Anderson, Best Performance for Daniel Day-Lewis, and Best Cinematography for Robert Elswit. Paul Dano also garnered the number four slot for Best Supporting Performance.

The Christian Science Monitor recommends HBO's The Wire as a Pick of the Week, calling the show "a profoundly thoughtful meditation on the modern American city, its institutions, and the underclass." The New York Times concurs, calling it a "sublime epic of urban realism." Season Five doesn't get underway for another couple weeks, so in the mean time, both papers suggest catching up with Season Four, out now on DVD.

NPR listeners have had their say: Wilco's Sky Blue Sky is one of the year's best CDs. The album, released in May, is still holding sway with listeners, whose votes placed the record in the top five, in the company of Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Feist, and the White Stripes.

The new soundtrack to the film Sweeney Todd earns five out of five on BroadwayWorld.com's holiday roundup list of the year's best CDs. "This recording is a 'must-have!'" raves the review. It "is just glorious," writes Naomi Plume. "The performances grab you in a whole different way than you would expect," she says. "I am also happy to report that [orchestrator] Jonathan Tunick and [conductor] Paul Gemignani deliver up their usual 'magic'!"

Time Out Chicago's film staff lists There Will Be Blood among the year's best. Hank Sartin, the magazine's film editor, places the "sprawling yet intense epic" on the top of his list, and the film writer Ben Keningsberg says Daniel Day-Lewis "gives the performance of the year."

North Coast Journal out of Humboldt County, California, asked some of the area's music mavens for their picks of the year's best. Gini Noggle, owner of the local record shop Metro, says Wilco's Sky Blue Sky is her favorite. "I fell in love with this CD," she says. "I have played it every day at work since it came out this summer (I’m not kidding) and it still sounds fresh every time. Jeff Tweedy could sing the phone book and I’d be riveted, his voice is that good."

In his recommendation of Sweeney Todd, NPR film critic Bob Mondello says that director Tim Burton has created a "splendid adaption" of the Stephen Sondheim original. On the acting front, Johnny Depp's "snarling, vengeance-crazed Sweeney Todd is a wonder." As expected, Mondello reports, both Depp and his co-star, Helena Bonham Carter "nail the roles emotionally" and, perhaps less expectedly, can sing. All in all, Mondello says, Sweeney Todd is "spectacularly stylized ...  persuasively sung, and imaginatively adapted for the screen."

David Edelstein, the film critic for NPR's Fresh Air and New York magazine, has placed Sweeney Todd and There WIll Be Blood on his list of the year's best films. Talking with Terry Gross about the films on Fresh Air, he compliments director Tim Burton for creating a "very intimate" version of what Gross refers to as the "absolutely brilliant, truly wonderful Stephen Sondheim musical." She asks Edelstein for his recommendation of the one movie audiences should see this holiday season. His answer: Sweeney Todd—"Great music, great photography, great performances, amazing arterial spray."