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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

"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."

Stephin Merritt played DJ to an eclectic crowd last night at London's George & Dragon pub. The photo here captures Merritt at the helm, conveniently positioned in front of a poster for The Magnetic Fields' upcoming Nonesuch release, Distortion, out in January:

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."