News

Vanessa Bryant has been awarded a significant sum in her civil suit against Los Angeles County regarding improper sharing of photos of the helicopter crash site where her husband, Kobe Bryant, and daughter were killed along with the other seven people in the aircraft.

After the 11-day trial, which included descriptions and photos of the graphic and horrific crash that likely re-traumatized the grieving Bryant and her family, she was awarded 16 million by a federal jury.

The nine-person jury convened to determine whether L.A. County sheriff’s department and fire department officials violated the privacy rights of Vanessa Bryant and a second plaintiff, Chris Chester, who lost his wife and daughter in the same crash when they took photos of the site, potentially due to Kobe Bryant’s fame.

The families of the deceased showed evidence that some of those who took photos have still not been identified, and...

Things are better than ever before, and things have never been worse. Such is the paradox that undergirds so many aspects of American life these past few years, and such is the paradox that Roberto Minervini seeks to explore to somewhat mixed results with his latest documentary, “What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?” Visually forceful and narratively understated, the verité-influenced film leans hard on its lush black and white cinematography in its attempt to offer a poetic snapshot of African-American life in the Deep South.

The film interweaves four (though it’s really more like three) main threads with just one shared connection: they all are centered around African-Americans living in Louisiana and Mississippi in the sweltering summer of 2017. The fact that the end credits list each figure with their given names attached to a character-archetype speaks to film’s desire to mine the specifics of...