Phil Spector charged with murder

Los Angeles — Record producer Phil Spector was charged in an indictment unsealed Monday with murder in the shooting death of a B-movie actress at his mansion last year.

Spector, 64, leaned on the arm of his attorney as the indictment in the slaying of 40-year-old Lana Clarkson was read. He was allowed to remain free on $1 million bail.

Judge David Lesley set Dec. 16 as the earliest possible trial date.

Spector, creator of rock music’s “Wall of Sound” recording technique in the 1960s, suggested in an interview with Esquire magazine that Clarkson shot herself.

Clarkson starred in Roger Corman’s cult film classic “Barbarian Queen.” She was working as a hostess at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip and went home from there with Spector the night she was killed.

Kevin Costner off market

Aspen, Colo.– “Dances with Wolves” star Kevin Costner has wed his girlfriend of five years, Christine Baumgartner, at his Colorado mountain ranch.

The Saturday afternoon wedding was attended by 300 of their family and friends. It is the second marriage for Costner, 49, and the first for Baumgartner, 30.

In addition to 1990’s “Dances With Wolves,” which won seven Oscars, Costner’s movie credits include “No Way Out,” “The Untouchables,” “Bull Durham,” “Waterworld,” “Tin Cup,” “JFK” and “Field of Dreams.”

His most recent film was the Western “Open Range.”

New album for Queen Latifah

Denver — Queen Latifah is getting a little jazzier.

Five albums and 15 years after her hard-hitting hip-hop debut “All Hail the Queen,” Queen Latifah is poised to release the jazz-obsessed “The Dana Owens Album” in which she sings standards.

“The Dana Owens Album” is released this week.

The new album, where she tackles songs by Al Green and The Mamas & the Papas, is something of a departure for an artist whose last record was “Order in the Court,” one of 1998’s better efforts at combining R&B and hip-hop.

But Queen Latifah said she had a fully formed and finished hip-hop album in her back pocket just waiting for the right label. “I figured I’d drop this album first,” she said.