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 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.

KILL THE IRISHMAN, a new mobster thriller based on the true story of Irish gangster Danny Greene, a man who the Italian mafia found very hard to kill, starts this Friday. It’s fantastic cast includes Ray Stevenson, Christopher Walken, Vincent D’Onofrio,Val Kilmer and Paul Sorvino.

Check out Salon.com’s rave review of the film and don’t miss our engagement of it that runs this Friday and Saturday at 9:20pm and continues April 6 & 7.

Review by Andrew O’Hehir

You might feel like you’ve seen enough mobster movies to last you a lifetime, and you might be right about that. But the secret of writer-director Jonathan Hensleigh’s highly enjoyable “Kill the Irishman” is that it doesn’t try to out-dazzle or out-splatter the Coppola-Scorsese-David Chase tradition. This is a movie with grime from the streets of Cleveland under its nails, which tells the more or less true story of Danny Greene, an Irish-American longshoreman who rose to become a 1970s crime boss in that oft-derided Lake Erie metropolis. (Much as I love Baltimore, it’s gotten enough pop-culture love recently to last a generation. With Drew Carey’s sitcom long off the air, maybe Cleveland is ready for its close-up.)

I don’t know what strange kismet has brought us two ’70s-flavored crime flicks that feel like half-finished Quentin Tarantino projects right on top of each other — this one and “The Lincoln Lawyer” — but I’m certainly not complaining. Hensleigh and cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub even shoot the film in period style, with lots of screwed-up, semi-industrial locations, an awesome soundtrack of vintage soul and rock, and muddy, subtly desaturated colors. (Maybe those are meant to suggest the notorious pollution of Cleveland, where the Cuyahoga River’s surface infamously caught on fire in 1969.) But “Kill the Irishman’s” most surprising asset is the out-of-nowhere performance of Ray Stevenson, a big, shaggy, brawling hunk of man-flesh who plays Danny as an elemental force of nature, sometimes crude and violent, sometimes kittenish and mild.

There’s an irresistible, Cleveland-esque, underdog quality about this whole production, in fact. Stevenson is a 46-year-old British actor of Irish ancestry who’s been kicking around action-movie and TV roles for many years, without ever getting any closer to stardom. Playing Titus Pullo in the BBC/HBO series “Rome” appears to have raised his profile considerably, but this part — as a half-sympathetic, half-repellent crime entrepreneur who essentially brought down Cleveland’s Italian Mafia by himself — is something else again. (He has upcoming roles in “Thor” and the unfortunate 3-D “Three Musketeers” film.) As for director Hensleigh, his two previous films are “The Punisher” and a straight-to-video cannibal film called “Welcome to the Jungle,” and he’s spent most of his career as a mid-level screenwriter and script doctor. I mean, which is worse: That Hensleigh did uncredited rewrites of “The Rock” and “Con Air,” or that he actually took credit for writing “Jumanji”? Nothing about him suggests that he was likely to make something with this degree of sheer crazy cinematic bravado, and damn it all, that’s inspiring.

Hensleigh’s large and delightful cast is loaded with actors eager to prove they’re still kicking, from Val Kilmer as Danny’s cop nemesis to Vincent D’Onofrio as an Italian Mafia turncoat who becomes Danny’s right-hand man and Christopher Walken as a snaky, sinister Jewish restaurateur. All these people, and many more colorful ethnic stereotypes besides, collide in the notorious summer of 1976, when America’s long-running mob wars brought near-total chaos to Cleveland (where there were nearly 40 bombings that year). This is a gangster movie, not a history lesson, but I always approve of teaching the young ‘uns important truths, such as this: The ’70s were completely freakin’ nuts, and you’re basically lucky you weren’t there. Maybe the secret weapon of “Kill the Irishman” is that grizzled veterans like Hensleigh and Stevenson know this for real.

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.

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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.

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The Mayfair and Lost Marbles’ Geek Night proudly invite you to into the twisted and filthy world of bad taste courtesy of filmmaker John Waters as we present three of his films: Pecker, Cecil B. Demented and Cry Baby. Prizes will be given away at every screening!

Check out this hilarious interview Waters did on Late Night with Conan O’Brien back in 1998 while promoting Pecker.

And while you’re at it, why not check out this very recent interview he did on George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight to plug his new book Role Models.

MINI JOHN WATERS FILM FESTIVAL

PECKER-Sunday November 7 at 8:30pm

CECIL B. DEMENTED-Sunday November 14 at 9:15pm

CRY BABY-Monday November 22 at 9:00pm

Why not see for yourself on Oct. 27 & 28 when this Ottawa-made biography of Emily Carr premieres at the Mayfair?

But on the internets, a lot of people have been playing with iconic images from the film, turning them into unofficial posters. I found dozens when I went looking, and I thought I’d share some of my favourites here. Feel free to share links to some of your favourite unofficial movie poster re-designs in the comments!

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