As I watched Mongol I was amazed to find myself reminded of The Story of the Weeping Camel, a film set in present day Mongolia. Although the films are set over a thousand years apart, the lives of nomadic Mongolians seems practically unchanged. I found it to be somewhat chastening, in my concerns over the lack of a new laptop or whether I brought the right shoes to Vegas, that somewhere on earth there are people who figured out a life that works for them over a thousand years ago, and it’s still working.

After the first movie I emerged to find the lobby transformed into a schmoozefest buffet. Along with the tables of turkey sandwiches, stir fry, burritos, and sushi (“Beware the all you can eat sushi” is a motto to which I firmly hold), movie theater employees were busily handing out bags of popcorn and cups for the soda machines. It was here that I encountered the poor hapless theater attendant, clearly already stretched to the limit trying to explain that the loose candy bins were locked and he simply couldn’t open them (as if they would entrust him with something so valuable as the loose candy bin key!), who sadly, even desperately informed me that the all you could drink soda didn’t include access to the Icee machine. To the employees of the Orleans Hotel Cinemark 18 all I can say is I hope ya’ll got paid overtime, cuz you earned it.

The next movie I picked to see was Then She Found Me. Since Helen Hunt would be receiving a Dining With The Stars award the next day (for Breakthrough Director of the Year), I felt it was important that I watch the film for which she would be so honored. Oh, who am I kidding? The movie has Colin Firth in it, for chrissake. I went to see Colin Firth. I love him and he has only himself to blame.

Random Thing Heard At ShoWest: (In the theater before Then She Found Me) So which film did you guys see… Mongol? Oh that’s the Japanese one… Chinese... right… Asian…lots of Asians in it…so it was all dubbed right? I don't need to go see a movie about Genghis Kahn, right? Cuz you know I married Genghis Kahn… right? Married Genghis Kahn… ha ha ha! (The speaker was male, in case you didn’t get the joke, right? His WIFE is GENGHIS KAHN. Get it?)

Then She Found Me is an interesting picture. Helen Hunt plays a woman whose husband leaves her and whose adoptive mother dies within days of each other. While still reeling, she is contacted by a woman claiming to be her birth mother, played with reckless joie de vivre by Bette Midler, and also begins a tentative, ill advised, but passionate affair with the very damaged single dad of one of her students.