Attention Mayfair regulars and moviegoers in Ottawa!

The Mayfair Theatre is about to celebrate 80 years of existence this May! But in order to continue bringing you the best in cinematic entertainment, we need your support! We are in the midst of raising funds to purchase a new DCP (Digital Cinema Package) projector, which is a major investment. We have set up “piggy banks” in our box office and candy bar, so you can donate any amount you can to help us raise the money. Every little bit helps!

Also, on Saturday May 26, join us as we kickstart our anniversary by showing the best films from each decade (1930s to the present). We’ll begin by showing your pick of the best film of the 1990s: THE BIG LEBOWSKI. The $15 admission will go towards raising the money for the projector as well. Prizes and a Best Lebowski Costume contest will also take place! Come and be apart of helping the historic Mayfair Theatre enjoy another 80 years of bringing you stuff you won’t see anywhere else!

The Mayfair abides…

The Fake Trailers Reel Festival makes its triumphant return to the Mayfair Theatre on Friday June 29th.

Our second annual coming attraction themed screening will include an hour long program of new original fake trailers, followed by an hour of rarely seen 35mm grindhouse / drive-in / bizarre / cult-classic trailers from the depths of the Mayfair vaults.

Submitted trailers should either be in a 30 or 60 second style TV commercial length trailer, or a 3 minute theatrical trailer. Deadline for submissions is Friday June 8th.

Any questions, please contact me at batturtle@gmail.com

The latest documentary from Oscar nominee and McDonald’s enemy Morgan Spurlock arrives at the Mayfair and makes it’s Ottawa premiere on May 4th (with follow-up screenings on the 5th, 6th, 9th and 10th).  The subject matter of the San Diego Comic Con is perfect research and prep to get you ready for the pop-culture invasion of the Ottawa Comiccon to our city on May 12th and 13th.

If the concept of a documentary produced by Joss Whedon and Stan Lee about the greatest geek gathering on the planet isn’t enough to lure you into the theatre, we will also have prizes every night from our friends at The Comic Book Shoppe and The Ottawa Comiccon.

Partake in Comic Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope, documentary fun featuring comic book fans the like of Seth Rogan, Seth Green, Kevin Smith, Paul Dini and more in the celebration of the joys of life that is geek.

Our friends at the NAC are offering a special promotion for Mayfair patrons.

If you’d like to get advance tickets to their upcoming The Lord of the Rings:  The Fellowship of the Rings concert (July 5, 6, 7), you can do so between now and April 11th via this link with the promo code MAYFAIR.

http://www.ticketmaster.com/Lord-of-the-Rings-tickets/artist/947846

PRESENTED BY CKCU FM | FREE FOR MEMBERS | LICENSED FOR ALCOHOL

This Sunday Feb. 26, the biggest and best Oscar party in Ottawa takes place right here at the Mayfair! Walk the red carpet, enjoy fit-for-a-star refreshments and watch as motion picture history unfolds where it’s supposed to — on the big screen!

The show begins at 8pm! Get here early! Admission is free for members. Memberships cost $10 and are valid for one year.

For a list of the Oscar nominations, visit oscar.com

The Mayfair Orleans (250 Centrum Blvd.) is currently screening several Oscar nominated films such as The Iron Lady, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Adventures of Tintin, The Descendants and The Artist. For listings, click here

THE ROOM, which Mayfair audiences have turned into a cult hit, will now be a monthly feature at the Mayfair Orleans (250 Centrum Blvd). It’s next screening is March 31! Now there will be more than one place to enjoy what Entertainment Weekly has called “The Citizen Kane of bad movies!”

DVDs of The Room are also available to buy at both Mayfair locations for $20. Enjoy the experience on the big screen, then let it tear you apart at home!

Click here for a sample of Tommy Wiseau’s visit to the Mayfair last spring.

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.”