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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

Audra McDonald will be among the Broadway luminaries instructing students from theater programs throughout the US at the December 27–29 Moveable Arts Winter Retreat in New York City. Events include workshops and master classes designed to give participants insight into the world of musical theater. Audra will lead a discussion exploring the path from stage to screen.

John Adams’s Doctor Atomic will receive its Chicago premiere when it opens this Friday at the Lyric Opera. Peter Sellars, the opera’s director and librettist, recently spoke with the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune about the piece. Doctor Atomic examines the events leading up to the detonation of the first atomic bomb. It goes behind the scenes of the Manhattan Project, where J. Robert Oppenheimer and a team of scientists worked under the pressures and the paranoia of the Cold War to launch the bomb and, subsequently, the Nuclear Age.

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.

Jardim Abandonado, the latest album from Sérgio and Odair Assad, was reviewed in today's edition of All Things Considered on NPR. Says Banning Eyre, these "legends of the classical-guitar world" have done their instrument and their precursors proud. Listen to the review here.

Youssou N'Dour performed the closing show of his current US tour before a sold-out crowd at the Somerville Theatre, outside Boston. According to the Herald, "the singer with the astounding pipes" led the audience through "two sweaty, dance-inducing hours" of songs throughout his career, including his latest album, Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take). And by the end of the show, writes the Herald's Bob Young, "N’Dour left no doubt that he—and Africa—still rule the world of scintillating powerhouse grooves." In last night's tour closer, "N’Dour showed why he’s one of pop music’s most commanding performers."