Photo courtesy of Loot It has been said about some documentaries that they would seem unbelievable were they not actually true. Loot is just such a film. Its premise is so spectacular, its story so absurd and compelling that your mouth ultimately just falls open as you watch it all unfold. The film begins with presumptive treasure hunter Lance Larson in the Philippines. He's at a dig site looking for gold that the Japanese may......

SPAM sales are on the rise. / Photo by freezelight via flickr. When I was growing up, SPAM made an appearance on our kitchen table more times than I care to remember. We could afford other meats, but the pink meat-in-a-can was a kind of tradition for my parents, who were fed the stuff after the American GIs left the Philippines. (I guess they forgot their SPAM on purpose?) I remember having SPAM sandwiches......

Are you a rice hoarder? Not anymore. Dramatic headlines all throughout the day are saying we are seeing food rationing of rice and some wheat products, a first since World War II. Due to a global shortage, Sam’s Club "is limiting sales of Jasmine, Basmati and long grain white rices because of global shortages," reports the Orange County Register's Fast Food Maven blog. "Sam’s Club is not restricting purchases of flour or oil... The decision......

Photo courtesy of dmax3270 via flickr While the features and shorts at Sundance are occasionally hit or miss, the documentaries are always strong across the board. Yesterday, I was able to see two that I have had my eye on since the festival schedule was originally released: Made in America by Stacy Peralta and Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden by Morgan Spurlock. Considering all the frantic back-and-forths I've been doing since last......

Johnny Grant was found dead tonight, around 7 p.m., on a bed at the Roosevelt Hotel where he lived on the 14th floor in a suite.Grant, 84, has been one of Hollywood's most enthusiastic supporters for more than 50 years. Grant got his start in entertainment by hosting a daily radio show in New York City for servicemen and women during World War II, and later co-hosted the first national telethon ever produced to help......

The bestests Christmas present ever a vintage Jiffy Kodak Series II camera used in World War II....

Not too long ago, I recall picking up a certain book on a shelf somewhere and reading the back, and then deciding it was going to be mighty depressing and put it back. A couple months later, I went to see Atonement on a friend's request, knowing nothing of the story, and discovered it was the same book. And yes, friends, this story is depressing. Without giving too much away, (and you probably know......

The sun sets on Lincoln Place Looks like the tenants and former tenants of Lincoln Place can, at long last, declare victory. The short-short version of the Lincoln Place ordeal: Over the last few years, Denver-based apartment management megalith AIMCO has succeeded in evicting nearly all the residents of Venice's Lincoln Place, a 700-unit, post-World War II affordable housing complex. They were hoping to bulldoze the place and build condos.......

How do you make world wars funny? During World War II, one of the more somber moments in world history, it took some time to find comedy in what was an absurd era that fomented the rise of Existentialism and made geniuses out of Albert Camus, Pablo Picasso and Jean-Paul Sartre, none of whom made their mark in comedy. In Springtime for Hitler, Mel Brooks showed us that even the most untouchable tyrants can be......

It's Veterans Day, and, to commemorate, let's check in on Iraq and see how some Veterans-to-be are doing. Turns out, things weren't so festive today there. A civil war continues to rage and officials announced that, with the 853rd death this past week, 2007 is now the deadliest year yet for American troops in the ongoing Middle East quagmire, surpassing 2004's total of 850. So far, 3,860 U.S. soldiers and 4,164 coalition troops from......

Tomorrow may be the day we observe today's holiday, yet today our local newspapers honor the men and women of the past and present who have fought for us. Here are their stories: Steve Lopez takes his weekly LA Times Sunday column and dedicates it to telling the story of Sgt. Maj. Jesse Acosta, who lost his sight, taste and smell in Iraq. Lopez follows Acosta as he commutes on the bus in Los Angeles.......

If you've missed Ken Burns' latest sprawling effort on PBS, you can catch it today when it drops on DVD. Silver Surfer was better than the original Fantastic Four, but that's not really saying much. Got to love Doug Jones, though. 1408 was a surprise summer hit. I think it'll work even better when you're watching it alone at home with the lights turned off. Entourage was never the same after the Aquaman arc,......

We know on Sunday that we can watch people bumpin' uglies on HBO as well as the randy exploits of a Hollywood posse on HBO as well as all the other junk on HBO because Sunday is an HBO kind of day. But I think that there's something else worth checking out that starts Sunday. The much anticipated and hugely overhyped new series from Ken Burns, The War, starts on Sunday night at 8:00pm......

Ken Burns debuts his latest documentary, The War....

Being a spy is a tough job. Not only do you constantly run the risk of being exposed by your enemies or compromised by an error in judgment or other grievous mistake (heck, your identity might even be leaked by your own government), you must also be able to adjust to rapidly changing conditions and always be quick on your feet. This then begs the question: why have you or a colleague do it......

- According to the LA Times, people who live next to trains and subways do not use them. - Eek! "From July 1 of 2006 to June 30 of this year, only 3.21 inches of rain fell in downtown Los Angeles — the lowest precipitation level since records started being kept in the 1880s." - After 80 mph driving and weaving on the Hollywood Freeway in March, actress Vivica A. Fox (Kill Bill, Independence Day)......

Sunday night I crept down an alleyway, drank a bunch of absinthe and watched a girl get her eyes gouged out with a knitting needle. The gouging wasn’t real, but the absinthe was. Welcome to Los Angeles' theatre du Grand Guignol de Paris. The Grand Guignol was a theater in the Pigalle district, the seamy underbelly of Paris. The theater’s focus varied slightly with shifts in management, but the subject matter of its short......

Occasional car nuts that we are, LAist couldn't be more stoked about the big event this weekend. Mid-Wilshire will be crawling with genuine hot rods all this weekend as part of the 75th anniversary of the '32 Ford, affectionately known as The Deuce. The Petersen Automobile Museum will be the focal point for all things Deuce-ish all this weekend, as 750 of the Fords are expected to turn out for what is certainly to......

Horse racing season has just begun at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, and from now until April 22, SoCal hopefuls (with $5 for general admission fee) can step up to tellered windows and pick the ponies to win, place or show. But there’s a lot of history behind them horses: Santa Anita opened on Christmas Day in 1934, and still now traditionally opens on Dec. 26 each year. Seabiscuit brought the park more notoriety,......

LA Fire Department blog lets us know that "all fireworks, even the so-called "safe and sane" variety are illegal in the City of Los Angeles, and have been outlawed since World War II!" We hope you recognize that exclaimation mark. The problem is, that poster looks so cool we want to re-create it. And then blow it up real good. - LAFD Don't know what to listen to while you're not letting off fireworks?......

The Daily News looks at the legacy of African-Americans in the valley (it's a little grim). Our favorite part is the story of Ida Kinney, now 101 years old; her grandparents were slaves in Arkansas. She was the first African-American woman to get a job at Lockheed's Burbank plant during World War II, and got a white friend to front for her in order to buy her home on an all-white block. Where she......

For years, Filipino veterans and citizens who served under U.S. armed forces during World War II were denied the same benefits afforded to other servicemen and women though their sacrifices were equal. The U.S. government didn’t begin to redress this inequity until recently -- when many of the soldiers and volunteers were long gone. Tomorrow, a portion of the proceeds from special screening of Miramax’s “The Great Raid” will go to the American coalition......

The funny thing about reading The “Grand Avenue Plan,” preliminarily approved last week, is pondering how often in the last century developers have felt the need to shift the functions of various districts, as though downtown LA were one of those party-favor puzzles in which you slide the little tiles around the board until a picture comes into focus. Certainly something needs to be done with the area — what ought to be a......

On August 6, 1945, Allied Forces in World War II dropped the first atomic weapon used in wartime on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The blast instantly destroyed four square miles of the city and at least 80,000 human beings. Tens of thousands more died of wounds, burns, and radiation in the following weeks. How fitting, then, that the Los Angeles stop of the "September 11: Bearing Witness to History" exhibition is located at the......

Joe Gold, founder of LA's iconic Gold's Gym and the man who helped pump up our very own Governator, passed away Sunday at the age of 82. Joe Gold was born in East Los Angeles. It was during his teens that he discovered Venice's Muscle Beach, the regular hangout for stuntmen, acrobats and bodybuilders. He became a regular, working out, playing beach volleyball and making friends with other Muscle Beach frequenters. He joined the......