The Los Angeles Times "Gold Derby" blog is already predicting that Sweeney Todd will win the Oscar for best picture. "Sondheim's musical score is a masterpiece," says the site. "Viewers can't help but get swept up in Sweeney's lush melodies and raging drama." The blog says of the Stephen Sondheim play on which it is based: "Arguably, it's the greatest in Broadway history."

In today's Boston Herald, Caetano Veloso lays out a complex path of inspirations for his new record, Cê, from Brazilian singers of the 1930s all the way up to the Arctic Monkeys and Animal Collective today, with stops at vintage-era Talking Heads along the way. A still more personal influence on the new sound is Caetano's son Moreno, who produced the album. Caetano performs at the Orpheum in Boston this Friday.

Kronos Quartet and Tom Waits performed last Saturday and Sunday for 40,000+ people at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California, as part of the 21st annual Bridge School Benefit organized by Neil Young and his wife, Pegi. Reports all point to the Waits/Kronos set as "the day's most thrilling" (San Jose Mercury News) and "the undisputed highlight of the concert" (Rolling Stone).

On Tuesday, November 6, the Austin Film Society will present a screening of Youssou N'Dour: Return to Gorée. The 2006 documentary, directed by Pierre-Yves Borgeaud, follows N'Dour and his band through Europe to a powerful performance at Gorée, the island off the coast of Senegal's capital that, for centuries, served as the final departure point for newly enslaved Africans. The screening is part of the Film Society's monthlong series Torn from the Motherland: Films from the African Diaspora, designed "to appreciate Pan-Africanist creativity under the cold realities of slavery, imperialism, colonization and neo-colonialism." 

Two lucky Pat Metheny fans will soon find themselves the owners of a brand-new Polk Audio iSonic home-entertainment system. To celebrate the upcoming release of his new record, Day Trip, with Christian McBride on bass and drummer Antonio Sanchez, patmetheny.com announced a contest with the two Polk consoles as the grand prize and signed copies of the record for 50 runner-up winners. Everyone who pre-orders Day Trip from the site is automatically entered to win. 

As reported yesterday, Wilco's latest performance at Austin City Limits will air on PBS stations across the country this Saturday. You can now catch a sneak peek of the band's ACL performance of "Impossible Germany" from Sky Blue Sky here.

The Associated Press has posted a preview of the upcoming holiday films, and Sweeney Todd and Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (with a score by Jonny Greenwood) have made the list. About Sweeney, AP asks "the season's big musical question: Can Johnny Depp sing?" And director Tim Burton replies with a resounding "yes": "He's a very musical person, but when he said he would do it, nobody had any idea if he could sing. I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn't have said yes to doing it if he couldn't."

In Sunday's New York Times, writer John Strausbaugh remembers Moondog, the avant-garde street poet/performer/composer who influenced the likes of Steve Reich and Philip Glass. This "Viking of Sixth Avenue" was a longtime fixture on the corner of Manhattan's Sixth Avenue and 54th Street through the early '70s. Though he passed away in 1999 at the age of 83, Moondog, a new book by Robert Scotto makes clear the artist's lasting influence. A festival featuring Moondog's work (along with Beethoven and Bach, among others) will take place this weekend at NYC's Advent Lutheran Church.

"When people ask what kind of music Austin City Limits stands for, there's one band that sums it up better than any other ... Wilco!" So says ACL producer Terry Lickona in opening the band's latest performance on the series, which airs this Saturday, November 3, on PBS stations across the country. Check your local PBS station for air dates and times near you to watch Wilco perform songs from its latest album, Sky Blue Sky, along with some classics.

On Friday night, London's Barbican Centre celebrated John Adams's 60th birthday in style. For the occasion, Adams conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a program featuring his own Choruses from The Death of Klinghoffer. BBC Radio 3 is broadcasting the concert on today's Performance on 3 program and will continue to stream the performance online for the next seven days.

Tomorrow night, Itzhak Perlman joins members of the Perlman Music Program for gifted young musicians in concert at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Included on the program is Steve Reich's Triple Quartet, along with Mozart's G Minor Quintet for Viola and Strings and Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence. Nonesuch released the world premiere recording of the Reich piece, performed by Kronos Quartet, in 2001.