Materialism

FT. MEADE, Md. - Army Pfc. Bradley Manning pleaded guilty Thursday to sending huge digital archives of secret U.S. military and diplomatic records to the WikiLeaks website, saying he was motivated by a U.S. foreign policy "obsessed with killing and capturing people. " Manning, 25, sat erect in dress blues beside his lawyers in a military courtroom and read aloud for more than an hour - slowly but sometimes stumbling over his words - from a 35-page, handwritten statement that described his personal angst over America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A deeply satisfying feat of storytelling, "Bless Me, Ultima" makes a difficult task look easy. It combines innocence and experience in a way not easy to categorize but a pleasure to watch. Taken from Rudolfo Anaya's landmark book, "Bless Me, Ultima" was a challenge because though it has a 6-year-old protagonist, likely material for a Disney film this is not. Which is why Carl Franklin is the ideal person to bring it to the screen. As the director of the mother-daughter drama "One True Thing," Franklin understands emotion.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has dabbled as a pop-culture critic, recently giving his thoughts on the HBO series " Girls . " Now Abdul-Jabbar is giving his take on the Quentin Tarantino film "Django Unchained. " "For me, 'Django Unchained' is like this season's Lakers: filled with talent and potential, but never coming together in a cohesive manner," Abdul-Jabbar wrote in a blog post on Esquire.com . Abdul-Jabbar argues that the Tarantino film did not deserve its Academy Award nominations for best picture or for best original screenplay, saying the picture is fundamentally a good "B film," lacking the depth of  an "A film.

Richard Artschwager, an artist who turned his apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker into a distinctive approach to making sculptures and paintings that defy easy categorization, died Saturday in Albany, N.Y., following a brief illness. He was 89. A retrospective of Artschwager's work, which travels to the UCLA Hammer Museum in June, closed Feb. 3 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan. It was the Whitney's second Artschwager retrospective and will be the third to be shown in Southern California.

Miles Davis had a raw, multi-syllable name for his group from 1969, and it wasn't one we can print in this newspaper. Known in various jazz-obsessive circles as the Lost Band, the powerful quintet of all stars Davis assembled between the release of plate-shifting albums "In a Silent Way" and "Bitches Brew" included keyboardist Chick Corea, bassist Dave Holland, drummer Jack DeJohnette and saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Though the group famously was never documented in the studio, its legacy is enhanced with "Live in Europe 1969," a four disc set that marks the second volume in Columbia/Legacy's Bootleg Series.

As a sign she may be getting serious about selling, Madonna has put her mansion in Beverly Hills up for sale in the Multiple Listing Service at $22.5 million. The property was being shown privately last year as a pocket listing, area real estate agents reported. During her nearly decade of ownership, the pop icon rebuilt and expanded the estate, completing it in 2010. The gabled-roofed behemoth sits behind gates on 1.17 acres of landscaped grounds. The compound, accessed by a 500-foot tree-lined driveway, includes a nine-bedroom main house, two guesthouses, a resort-size swimming pool and a tennis court.

WASHINGTON - The military judge overseeing the trial for alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four others has ruled that lawyers cannot make public even unclassified materials. The ruling by the judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, follows an order on Dec. 6 in which he directed that any evidence or discussion about harsh interrogation techniques used against the five men also be kept secret. He issued the ruling despite accusations by human rights groups that the government was trying to hide the fact the men were tortured.

For 5,000 years or more, bangle bracelets have encircled female arms. They've been found in Vedic Hindu tradition, on Egyptian deities and in Mayan cultures. Once made primarily of metals and semi-precious stones, bangle bracelets are now fashioned from all kinds of materials, including wool, wood, silk, horn, silicone rubber, hemp, aluminum and even fossilized woolly mammoth tusks. Here's a handful of beautiful bangles from some of today's bracelet designers: Cuyo by Tamika Rivera Brooklyn artist Tamika Rivera makes and sews each of her one-of-a-kind bangles from fabrics, colorful yarns and threads.

WASHINGTON -- There is no evidence that Mike Vickers, the Pentagon's undersecretary for intelligence, disclosed classified information when he spoke to the makers of the film "Zero Dark Thirty," the Pentagon's chief spokesman said Tuesday. “There is a pending inspector general investigation on the question of whether Mr. Vickers provided classified information in an interview with the filmmakers of 'Zero Dark Thirty,' ” Pentagon spokesman George Little said. When the Department of Defense reviewed a transcript of Vickers' conversation with the filmmakers after it was requested under the Freedom of Information Act, Little said, none of the material was deemed to be classified.

A Florida man who hacked into email accounts and procured naked images of Scarlett Johansson, Christina Aguilera and Mila Kunis was sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison. U.S. District Court Judge S. James Otero sentenced Christopher Chaney, 35, of Jacksonville after hearing how he intruded into the lives of dozens of celebrities and others and in some cases passed naked images along on the Internet. Chaney, who has maintained he made no money from his actions, had already pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court to nine counts of computer hacking and wiretapping for the unauthorized access of email accounts of 50 people in the entertainment industry.