With 2008 just about to get under way, and a whole new year in music still waiting to unfold, The Magnetic Fields' upcoming release, Distortion, tops Los Angeles Times staff writer Todd Martens' list of what to look forward to straightaway. The album is set for release on Nonesuch January 15.

MTV's Kurt Loder says that Jonny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood is among the "wonderful" parts of Paul Thomas Anderson's new film. Loder calls Anderson's decision to hire Greenwood an "audacious" one, and one that paid off, with the end result an outstanding work independent of the film for which it was written: "The music is an orchestral wash of beautifully harmonized melodies spiked with thoroughly modern dissonance, and while it's a jarring accompaniment for some of the imagery, it stands on its own as a series of superbly astringent compositions."

New York Times film critics Manohla Dargis and Stephen Holden both rate Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood at the top of their lists of favorite films of the year. Dargis writes that it was one of the two films of 2007 that "matter most to me, that dug in the deepest and rearranged my own givens ... that shook up my world in the best possible way." And Holden compares There Will Be Blood to three classic American films, while recognizing that the director has created something entirely new as well. Anderson's film, Holden writes, "suggests a fusion of East of Eden, Giant, and Citizen Kane with the Hollywood finery ripped to shreds."

"Spellbinding" says CBS Sunday Morning's film critic David Edelstein of Tim Burton's film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. "Sondheim, our greatest living theatrical composer and lyricist," Edelstein says, "has never been so deliciously served."

Joshua Redman's Back East is number one on New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff's list of the best CDs of 2007. Summing up the record, Ratliff writes: "Here Mr. Redman compresses his goals, leaves distractions behind and makes the most agile and personal record of his career." Back East makes fellow Times critic Nate Chinen's best-of list as well. Redman, Chinen writes, "has never sounded more at ease than he does here," and the performance by Joshua's father, late saxophonist Dewey Redman, in his last studio recording, "raises stakes as well as hairs."

Tim Burton, in adapting Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd for the big screen, has done so "with a bravura visual style thrillingly in touch with the timelessly depraved delights of Grand Guignol," says the Washington Post. Burton's adaptation of Sweeney Todd will prove to be "the brilliant singing splatterfest that finally gives [Sondheim] a stab at cinematic immortality."

Kronos Quartet has been named Ensemble of the Year by Gramophone China magazine, based on a concert with pipa virtuoso Wu Man this past March at the Shanghai Concert Hall. The program included performances of Tan Dun's Ghost Opera and sections from Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic. Nonesuch released the studio recording of Kronos and Wu Man performing the former piece in 1997 and will release their recording of the latter piece early next year.

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."

Wilco's Sky Blue Sky, it's just been announced, is among the nominees for the 2007 Shortlist Music Prize, which recognizes the most creative and adventurous albums of the year. The winner will be announced early next year. Wilco was previously nominated for the Shortlist Prize in 2004 for their last album, A Ghost Is Born.

Wilco's Sky Blue Sky is on the Boston Herald's music critics' list for Best of 2007. The Herald writes that "Jeff Tweedy finds a foil and ace guitarist in Nels Cline and proves what music geeks have said for years: Wilco may be the American band of the decade."

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."