The era of classic family cinema returns to Orleans! Mayfair Theatre Orleans announces its grand opening December 2, 2011

The Mayfair Theatre Orleans officially opens its doors — and revives the era of classic family cinema — on December 2, 2011 at 6:00PM.

The Mayfair Theatre Orleans is located at 250 Centrum Blvd., Orleans (across the street from the Shenkman Arts Centre).

FAMILY-FRIENDLY PROGRAMMING
The Mayfair Theatre Orleans will focus on family-friendly programming, and will bring a greater diversity of film-going choices to Ottawa’s east end. In addition to family fare, the cinema will also offer first-run independent films and second-run Hollywood movies, as well as Québécois, other Canadian and foreign cinema. It’s the best of art house and the cineplex combined!

MAKING GOING TO THE MOVIES AN EVENT AGAIN
The owners and management are members of the team behind the renovation and reopening of the historic Mayfair Theatre on Bank St. Their aim is to make going to the movies fun again, and to offer the classic cinema experience you can’t get at home.

In contrast to chain cinemas, the Mayfair Theatre Orleans offers audiences:

• Three full-sized screens
• State-of-the-art 35mm projection on all three screens, for that classic movie feel
• A digital projector for newer, digital-only releases
• A 16mm projector for rare films only available in that format
• A state-of-the-art sound system
• 2D presentations — no dark, murky, overpriced digital 3D!
• Ultra-comfy fixed seating — no sweaty leather or annoying rocking seats!

GRAND OPENING
Along with a selection of recently released films, the cinema’s opening weekend will also feature a program of classic and family-oriented films including:

• The Back to the Future trilogy
• The original Muppet Movie from 1979 and the 1981 follow up The Great Muppet Caper
• Gone With the Wind (on the big screen in Ottawa for the first time in 13 years!)

Additionally there will be a movie poster sale and performances by The Cow Guys (an Ottawa based performing duo who blend juggling, magic and comedy for all ages) all weekend long.

AFFORDABLE FAMILY FUN
Admission to the Mayfair Theatre Orleans is value priced — no more taking out a loan to take the family to the movies:

• Members: $5.00
• Non-members: $9.00
• Seniors/Children: $6.00

Annual individual memberships are only $10.00 and annual family memberships — good for up to two adults and four children under the age of 18 living at the same address — are just $20.00!

Special Offer for our Grand Opening Weekend Only: Patrons who purchase a membership card during the opening weekend will receive a free admission for their next visit before January 31, 2012.

So leave your home theatres at home, Orleans! It’s time to experience going to the movies again!

For more information, please contact:

Lee Demarbre
Mayfair Theatre Orleans Programmer
Office: 613-837-3457
Cell: 613-301-4728
lee@mayfairtheatre.ca

You might know Josh Stafford as the Mayfair’s resident “geek” who has provided y’all with several of our Geek Night feature presentations, with a little help from Lost Marbles.

Culture Magazine has done an interview with him in which he discusses this month’s diverse must-see programming as well as shed some light onto what makes the Mayfair the perfect home for movie geeks with an insatiable appetite for all things cinema.

Check out the article here!

This August we are proud to present our Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Woody Allen* Festival! Throughout the month, we’ll screen some of Woody Allen’s best films, including his latest — and most successful – Midnight in Paris.

We’ll have everything from his sci-fi screwball comedy Sleeper to his signature classics Annie Hall and Manhattan to later Oscar-winners Bullets Over Broadway and Mighty Aphrodite — plus many others!

Meanwhile, check out this interesting  interview with Woody in which he discusses his personality (quite a subject!) and how he got into show business.

*Remember, 80% of success is showing up!

The documentary CONAN O’BRIEN CAN’T STOP, is an exciting new film which chronicles Coco’s difficult time after leaving The Tonight Show and NBC and putting together his Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television live tour before returning to the tube on TBS. It makes it’s Ottawa premiere this July (July 8-10, 13 & 14 to be exact). Roger Ebert has written his review of this revealing doc which shows Conan behind the scenes showing a side of him never seen on screen before. Check it out and then come to see Conan on the big screen, then you can go home and watch him on a smaller screen!

Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop
Just because the rug was pulled from under him

Release Date: 2011

Ebert Rating: ***

By Roger Ebert Jun 22, 2011

“Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop” has a title of piercing accuracy. After NBC and Jay Leno pulled the rug out from under him, the comic went overnight from hosting “The Tonight Show” to being banned from television for six months. To be sure, NBC paid him $40 million in a send-off package, but the Conan O’Brien we see in the film wasn’t in it for the money. He was in it because he can’t stop.

I appeared many times on his original program, most memorably being attacked by a man in a bear suit. I always liked him. I’ve also been on Carson, Oprah, Letterman, Leno, Regis, Arsenio, Joan Rivers and “A.M.” here and “A.M.” there. You arrive at least an hour early, finish with makeup, leave your dressing room door open and watch what happens in the corridor. Carson, Conan and Leno would drop by to say hello. I don’t remember seeing the others before airtime. Letterman in particular seems to build up steam in private. It has nothing to do with who’s nice and who isn’t. It’s show biz.

Watching this documentary, I realize that when Conan lost “The Tonight Show,” he was like Wile E. Coyote, chasing the Road Runner of his dreams off the edge of a cliff and afraid to look down. Enraged at Leno and NBC, he quickly undertook “The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour,” which covered 32 venues, from Radio City Music Hall to the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee, where inside a tent in 100-degree heat, he was expected to introduce every act, and did. You get the notion he would have introduced them anyway.

Here is a man driven to assert himself. He waited five years for “The Tonight Show,” lost it in months and needed to say to the universe, “Sir! I exist!” The film, directed by Rodman Flender, watches him before and after shows and en route between cities, seeing a man incapable of giving himself a break. Overworked, exhausted, assaulted by demands, he cannot say no to an autograph, patiently hosts waves of visitors in his dressing room, drums up work on his days off and at times seems on the edge of madness.

Everyone around him pays a price. He relentlessly nibbles away at his support system, picks on his personal assistant, needles his sidekick Andy Richter and dominates his “writers” so compulsively that I can hardly recall one of them being allowed to say anything at meetings. He seems to consider them more of an audience.

Why these people stay with him is a mystery. My guess is that they know him better than we do and realize he’s undergoing a crisis. He’s driven. After shows, exhausted, he insists on going out to sign autographs and pose for photos with fans. The photos in particular are a version of the Water Torture Test for celebrities. The fan hands a camera to a friend or bystander, who inevitably doesn’t know how to operate it. The celebrity remains in position, his mouth frozen in a rictus, while the fan explains how the camera operates: “You push this button.”

In addition to telling jokes, O’Brien plays guitar and joins a backup band and various guest stars to perform country-rock. He’s surprisingly good, for a talk show host. He fantasizes receiving text messages from Jay Leno (“What’s it like to have a soul?”). I can only imagine how well he sleeps. We see his wife in only one brief early scene, and I suspect she was well-advised not to come along on tour.

This is not to say Conan O’Brien is a bad man. In fact, after the movie, I rather admired him. What we are seeing is a man determined to vindicate himself after a public humiliation. People attend his shows, cheer him, like him. That proves something, doesn’t it?

What we don’t see are the details of what must have been going on all this time in negotiations to find a new television home after the end of the six-month banishment. He and his agents must have been talking with a lot of possibilities, including TBS, where he ended up. Those talks would have added a maddening level of frustration to his exhausting existence.

O’Brien started out as a writer. He must have been driven to become a performer. It is a need in some people. One of the almost unbelievable stories in talk show history is how Johnny Carson was able to retire at the height of his popularity, and mean it, and stick to it. Maybe one of the reasons people liked him so much is that he never seemed to need to perform.

Other people do. I once ob served Henny Youngman taping a TV show in the old NBC studios at the Merchandise Mart. We got into an elevator together. It stopped at the second floor, a private club. A wedding was under way. Youngman got off the elevator, asked to meet the father of the bride and said, “I’m Henny Youngman. I’ll do 10 minutes for $100.”

FAKE TRAILERS/REAL FILM FESTIVAL!

Friday June 24 at 9:30pm

The Mayfair challenges you to produce and submit a fake movie trailer for a non existent film, 2 to 3 minutes in length! The trailer cannot be for a pre-existing film or for a film that  the filmmaker intends to make. It’s all pretend folks!

Deadline for submissions is Friday June 3rd.

Submissions can be handed in on DVD. Preferred format for final assembly for the screening is Quicktime (to be really specific, export as apple pro res HQ. At a frame rate of 24p, if possible).

Please send submissions to either address:

Mayfair Theatre

1074 Bank St.

Ottawa, Ontario, K1S 3X3

OR

Josh Stafford

473 Gladstone Ave – Apt #1,

Ottawa, Ont, K1R 5N7

For more information, please email Josh Stafford at batturtle@gmail.com!

Have fun and good luck!

Her current employer, Global Pet Foods on Wellington Ave. is also accepting donations.

A fundraiser for her will be held at the Elmdale Tavern on Wellington on May 14 at 2pm. 100% of the money donated will go towards Lauren’s recovery.

We wish all the best for Lauren in her recovery!

Ms. Loo learned to cook at the knees of her family members, and the majority of what she produces are these very recipes — veganized! Auntie Loos’ firmly believes that if you want a dessert, it had better taste like one.

You could take our word for it that Auntie Loo’s treats are crazy yummy — or you can try them for yourself next time you’re here.

In the meantime, whet your appetite by learning more about Auntie Loo on her official website.

Unfortunately, The Mayfair’s scheduled screenings of The King’s Speech (March 11-14 & 17) have been cancelled.

Why?

In early February, we booked The King’s Speech from distributor Alliance Atlantis.

On February 27, The King’s Speech won four Oscars.

On March 8 (three days before we were scheduled to start showing The King’s Speech), Alliance Atlantis informed us that they would NOT be sending us the print of the film. They feel they can make a little more money if they continue to play it at The World Exchange, instead of at your neighbourhood cinema.

In its place, we’re presenting Sofia Coppola’s critically acclaimed drama, Somewhere. (Which is brilliant, and you should definitely see.)

We sincerely regret any inconvenience.

If you’d like to let Alliance Atlantis know how you feel about the situation, you can leave a message on their Facebook page or call them directly at 416-967-1164.

We’re sure they’d be happy to hear from you.

CUT.

If you like the look of this poster, and why shouldn’t you?, you can purchase it on the Skuzzles site.

Say you’re planning to come see Planet of the Apes on March 12 (and if you’re not, you should be). Just scroll down to the bottom of the film listing, and you’ll see an additional social media menu that looks like this:

Now, you can add the movie to your calendar, share it on Twitter, invite friends to it by email or share it on Facebook — all with a single click.

And then, come March 12, all your friends show up and thank you profusely for inviting them to one of the greatest science fiction films of all time. And you’re a hero.

I think that sounds pretty good. How about you, Mark?

Cut.