In the second installment of the Stephen Sondheim interview on the making of Sweeney Todd, the composer discusses some of the major inspirations behind the musical (think film) and puts to rest one longstanding misconception about the work. In the end, though, it could all be summed up in one very basic principle; says Sondheim: "All I wanted to do was scare an audience."

The All Songs Considered annual holiday edition aired today on NPR, and in the show's special holiday mix is the festively titled "Mr. Mistletoe" off The Magnetic Fields' forthcoming Nonesuch release, Distortion.

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.

HBO's The Wire has been nominated for Best Dramatic Series by the Writers Guild of America, as well as Best Episodic Drama for the episode "Final Grades," the season finale from the show's fourth season, now out on DVD. The WGA Awards will be handed out February 9 in Los Angeles and New York.

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. 

Sweeney Todd prop master David Balfour explains in vivid detail for the Los Angeles Times how he created the all-important "chaste silver" set of razors for Johnny Depp to wield on screen as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The article includes up-close shots of six of the blades designed for the film, each with an eerie engraving well-suited to its murderous task. 

Stephen Sondheim sat down for an interview to discuss the forthcoming film version of his musical masterpiece Sweeney Todd. Over the next few days, leading up to the December 18 release of the film's soundtrack, the Nonesuch Journal will bring you exclusive video footage of the composer's candid take on Tim Burton's adaptation of his beloved work. In this first segment, Sondheim comments on the ins and outs of putting this "slasher musical" on screen. "Unlike all other movies of stage musicals that I know," he says, "this really is an attempt to take the material of the stage musical and completely transform it into a movie."

The South by Southwest Music Conference and Festival has just announced that Steve Reich will participate in the March 2008 conference, in a conversation with Thurston Moore. 

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."

The Tacoma Art Museum will present the exhibition A Couple of Ways of Doing Something: Photographs by Chuck Close, Poems by Bob Holman, March 1–June 15, 2008. The exhibit includes portraits by Close of such esteemed artists as Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, and Robert Wilson, among many others (including the self-portrait at right), along with praise poems written in conjunction with Close's work by Holman, the founder of the Bowery Poetry Club.

In a season already notable for next week's broadcast of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, starring Audra McDonald and Patti LuPone, PBS's Great Performances 2007–2008 season will include a February 20, 2008, airing of the recent revival of Stephen Sondheim's Company. The series will air a performance from the 2006–2007 production of Company, directed by John Doyle, which earned a host of awards, including the Tony for Best Revival; the cast recording, a Nonesuch release, was recently nominated for a Grammy for Best Musical Show Album.