In bygone eras, a cappella singing may have been the province of the hopelessly square, those unfortunate and lovely souls whose sweater vests and high pants betrayed an utter lack of cool.  Even a cursory glance at contemporary pop-culture provides a look at an apparently insatiable American hunger to hear familiar pop songs redone in infectious styles, and a cappella is about to benefit from that hunger in a major way.

On Friday, September 28th, Pitch Perfect hits select theaters before expanding nationwide on October 5th.  The new musical comedy aims to prove that a capella need no longer be associated exclusively with nerdlingers singing fuzzy old standards.  Instead, the film, written by 30 Rock's Kay Cannon and directed by Jason Moore, features mashups aplenty and songs including "No Diggity," "Party in the U.S.A.," and "Let's Talk About Sex."

Anna Kendrick (Up In the Air) stars as Beca, a college freshman who would much rather be in Los Angeles pursuing her dream of becoming a DJ.  When seniors Chloe and Aubrey, played by Brittany Snow (The Vicious Kind) and Anna Camp (True Blood) recruit Beca for the all-female a cappella team The Bellas, she finds herself composing innovative mashups, expressing herself in entirely new way, and possibly falling for a member of The Bellas' rival all-male a cappella group The Treblemakers.

IAR was on hand for the Los Angeles press day promoting Pitch Perfect, where Anna Kendrick, Brittany Snow, and Rebel Wilson discussed their musical backgrounds, the often arduous process of singing on camera, improvising, working with Jason Moore, and the current music climate.

Very early in a new video featurette on Dark Shadows, Michelle Pfeiffer begins, "The Collins family is," before pausing briefly and concluding, "odd."  Pfeiffer plays Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard, the matriarch of a highly dysfunctional family inhabiting the ancient, dusty old Collinwood Manor.  Every member of the family, and indeed a few characters who aren't official family members, get their moment in this new three-minute featurette.

Attention, Bondophiles, a bunch of new images from Skyfall have appeared online, along with the latest in the ongoing series of videoblogs.  With the exception of two official images, up until now we've been seeing exclusively spy photos from the set of Bond's 23th cinematic outing, but these are actual stills, giving a sense of how nine-time Oscar nominee/cinematographer extraordinaire Roger Deakins is handling the first Bond feature to be shot digitally.

Earlier this week, Sony Pictures let the cat out of the bag with the reveal of the first trailer for Total Recall, the remake of Paul Verhoeven's 1990 adaption, which loosely took on Philip K. Dick short story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.  Now that the cat's out of the bag, it's busily doing adorable cat-stuff.  By which I mean to say that there's now an official behind the scenes video for Total Recall online.

To exactly what extremes would you go to save your child?  Ask any parent and they will tell you that extreme doesn’t begin to cut it.  Rebecca Winstone (Ashley Judd) will go to the ends of the earth to find her son, Michael (Nick Eversman), who has disappeared under suspicious circumstances in the new ABC thriller Missing, which premieres Thursday, March 15th at 8PM/7PM CST. 

To further thicken the plot, both Becca (Judd), as well as Michael’s father, were CIA agents. If she wants to find her son alive, she will need to pull all of her resources, skill and determination to find out what has happened to him. She will also need to reopen the closed doors and old wounds from her past and rely on former friends and colleagues. 

When a week passes without Michael’s daily texts and phone calls to ensure his safety, Becca becomes increasingly concerned. After a call from the university saying that her son hasn't attended classes during this time period, she embarks on a desperate journey to Europe to investigate the case of her missing son. A student in Rome studying architecture, he has disappeared while on a summer internship in Italy. This retired CIA agent finds that she still has what it takes to track down, and take down, the bad guys. Any and every possible obstacle will get in her way, but nothing will stop her.

The found footage format may be coming of age.  The naturalistic, fake documentary style has for years been limited almost exclusively to horror movies that use the shakeycam aesthetic to elicit jump scares or as a clever means of working on a miniscule budget.  Last month's Chronicle demonstrated both commercially and critically that the style could be successfully applied to the superhero genre.  Now, the raucous R rated comedy Project X uses the faux-documentary style to capture the biggest high school party ever conceived.

Todd Phillips, a filmmaker almost pathologically compelled to explore joyously bad behavior (as demonstrated by directorial efforts Old School, Road Trip, and The Hangover) produces Project X.  Commercial and music video veteran Nima Nourizadeh makes his feature directorial debut, working from a screenplay by Michael Bacall and Matt Drake.

The story follows a trio of high school students, played by Thomas Mann, Oliver Cooper, and Jonathan Daniel Brown.  When meek Thomas's parents go out of town on his seventeenth birthday, the boys plan a huge house party that eventually escalates from epic to straight-up apocalyptic.  At the Los Angeles press day for Project X, both Phillips and Nourizadeh, along with all three lead actors and actresses Alexis Knapp and Kirby Bliss Blanton, were on hand to discuss making the ambitious party movie.

Cowboys & Aliens boasts a cast of blockbuster fixtures like Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, and Sam Rockwell, all of whom we've seen in the film's impressive roster of trailers and assorted promotional material.  The film also has something of an all-star creative team, as well, and a new behind-the-scenes featurette includes interviews with director Jon Favreau, executive producer Steven Spielberg, producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, as well as co-writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman.  Also included is some new footage and dialogue from the film, all of which is most assuredly spoiler-free.