Mandolin player and composer Chris Thile learned the hard way that when you get a call from the 312 area code this time of year, you should probably answer the phone.

Thile is among 23 recipients of this year’s MacArthur Foundation “genius grants,” which are given in a secrecy-shrouded process. Winners have no idea they’ve been nominated for the $500,000 awards until they get the call, and nominators must remain anonymous.

After the Baylor Lady Bears’ national championship in 2005, the team lost four seniors, two of them starters.

The next season, Baylor fell in the Sweet Sixteen to Maryland 82-63.

The best female-driven comedy movie to hit theaters since “Bridesmaids” has now arrived.

After a heavy social marketing regime, “Pitch Perfect” hit theaters a week early in some cities, living up to its expectation as one of the funniest films of the fall.

Beca, played by Anna Kendrick (“Up in the Air”, “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”), is a rebellious aspiring DJ forced into college by her English teacher father, whose job offers her free tuition.

After a month of solitude and interning at the student radio station, her father confronts her about finding a job and making friends by the end of the year, and if she can’t, he’ll help her move out to L.A. to live her DJ-ing dreams.

Frankenweenie,” Tim Burton’s new stop-motion animated feature for Walt Disney Pictures which comes out Friday, opens with a young boy, Victor, watching a homemade movie. The star happens to be his dog, Sparky, who rescues miniature townsfolk from a Godzilla-like monster, a foreshadowing of things to come.