Now on display at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris is Playback, an exhibition exploring the intersection between video art and music videos. The show features video by artists like Andy Warhol, William Wegman, Damien Hirst, Sonic Youth, and Laurie Anderson. "In a time when most video art has become multi-screen installation," says InterAccess, "Playback makes a strong case that single channel video, in the form of the music video, is alive and well, with an audience and a distribution network to rival single channel video’s heyday."

The New York Post's film critic Lou Lumenick recently caught a preview of Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood and is adding to the film's Oscar buzz . "One thing is clear," he writes. "The amazing Daniel Day-Lewis is the top contender for Best Actor honors. Day, who has been leading prognosticators' charts ... for several weeks, is unforgettable as an oilman undone by his avariciousness in this full-blooded, early 20th-century epic ..." Harp magazine looks at the film's score by Jonny Greenwood, including a statement from the composer about his process for creating music for this "full-blooded" film.

In this week's Boston Phoenix, Banning Eyre reviews Youssou N'Dour's latest CD, Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take), and finds further confirmation that "the emotional nexus of N'Dour's best work [is] in his near-divine voice." The album is "just one more reflection of how the demands of N’Dour’s far-flung audiences have sharpened his powers." N'Dour's US tour heads to the Boston area on Monday, December 10.

New York Public Radio station WNYC's Soundcheck staff have released their Picks of the Week. The show's executive producer, Gisele Regatao, points to Youssou N'Dour's Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take), and host John Schaefer names David Byrne's The Knee Plays among the "stand-out new albums" worth checking out now.

On this morning's edition of Today, BBC Radio 4's flagship news and current affairs program, David Byrne talked about the inspiration behind The Knee Plays. The piece was originally devised as part of an epic theater piece by director Robert Wilson in 1984 and has just now been released on CD by Nonesuch. Read what he had to say here.

Craig Smith, 60, Founder and Artistic Director of Boston's Emmanuel Music, has died. Opera News reports that Smith, a frequent collaborator of the late mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, passed away last Wednesday, November 14, in Boston, from complications due to diabetes-related kidney failure. We at Nonesuch offer our heartfelt condolences to Craig Smith's family and colleagues.

The DownBeat 72nd Annual Readers Poll results are in, including the Best Jazz Album of the Year: Pat Metheny and Brad Mehldau's Metheny Mehldau. Metheny was also named Best Guitarist and Mehldau Best Acoustic Pianist. "There was a real exchange and richness of ideas," Metheny tells DownBeat about the making of the album. "We talked about the most complex, simple, detailed, or general idea at will. We moved around within three dimensions, sound-wise or texture-wise, harmonically or rhythmically."

Caetano Veloso spoke with Newsday about his new album, the rock-infused, Cê, and his long history with the genre, going back to the early days of Tropicália. "I never intended to solve the contradiction between traditional and contemporary music," he says. "Real contemporary music can use tradition in so many ways: to reaffirm aspects of it while refusing others, to create a total contrast to it, to choose the role of its savior. Or, as we Tropicálistas did, sway through all of the above."

On New York Times music critic Jon Pareles's list of events to look out for this week are concerts by Caetano Veloso and Youssou N'Dour, two "musicians who qualify as full-fledged national heroes." While they come from different continents, both "accepted the same mission: to make contemporary pop that sounds both local and global, and highly individual." And each will perform at New York's Nokia Theatre.

New Yorker music critic Alex Ross will be reading from his new book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century, at Politics & Prose in Washington, DC, tomorrow. In advance of the reading, he spoke with Washington Post's Express about the state of classical music, and offered readers some Top Five lists on the subject. Number one on his list of contemporary classical works pop listeners might like: Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians.

"Daniel Day-Lewis is a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination for his performance as an unscrupulous prospector in Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!" So writes Ruthe Stein in her preview of There Will Be Blood in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle special holiday movie section. "Day-Lewis is in almost every scene, and he shows how ambition can destroy as well as nurture," she reports. "He's scary. Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine) is frightful in another way as a fire-breathing preacher and would-be healer."

Catch a glimpse of director Paul Thomas Anderson's monumental new film, There Will Be Blood, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a merciless turn-of-the-century oil baron. In the preview, you can hear Jonny Greenwood's powerful score, which the LA Times says gives the film with an "epic sonic scope" worthy of an Oscar nomination. Nonesuch will release the soundtrack December 18; the film hits theaters December 26.