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."

Daniel Day-Lewis has been nominated by the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) as Best Actor for his performance in There Will Be Blood. The 14th Annual SAG Awards will be handed out in a ceremony broadcast live on TNT and TBS on January 27.

The fifth and final season of The Wire debuts January 6 on HBO, with the series' first-ever soundtracks due out on Nonesuch two days later, so now is the perfect time to tune in to The Wire Odyssey, tonight on HBO, and catch up on the previous four seasons of the Peabody Award–winning show. The half-hour retrospective takes a look back at the show Slate magazine has said is "surely the best TV show ever broadcast in America."

There Will Be Blood director Paul Thomas Anderson spoke with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air yesterday about the making of his latest film, from the joys of working with Daniel Day Lewis to the dangers of recreating an out-of-control oil-derrick fire to the film's haunting score by Jonny Greenwood. When Gross asks why the music works so well, Anderson answers: "All the credit goes to Jonny." You can hear the conversation here.

KEXP, 90.3, Seattle, has posted the Top Ten lists from its Specialty Shows DJs. Youssou N'Dour's Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take) was among the year's favorites of Jon Kertzer, the station's expert on African and Afro-Caribbean music. Caetano Veloso's Cê and Ibrahim Ferrer's Mi Sueño are on the list from Darek Mazzone, whose show covers Modern Global Music.

Youssou N'Dour's Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take) has made the Best of 2007 list from Siddhartha Mitter, a Boston Globe contributor and a reporter for WNYC, New York Public Radio.

Wilco will be on hand when Australia's award-winning Byron Bay Blues Festival makes its way across the Tasman Sea to launch a New Zealand offshoot in 2008 called BluesfestNZ (aka the Coromandel Peninsula Blues and Roots Music Festival 2008). The band will be joining the line-up for the inaugural event as part of its March 2008 tour of Australia and New Zealand.

The Star-News out of North Carolina says Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd  "deserves a wide audience." The Star-News review praises Burton for making "easily the best movie musical of 2007" and creating for it a concept that "works brilliantly." In the end, it's Sondheim's score that proves to be "the real hero of the show." In the film, "the music is powerful ... but what strikes you is how lyrical it is" and "far more complex and interesting" than your standard musical-theatre fare.

Wilco's Sky Blue Sky has made the Best of 2007 list from WFUV, 90.9 FM, in New York. "Another great album from Wilco," writes WFUV's music director, Rita Houston, "Sky Blue Sky doesn't hit a wrong note."