It’s Christmas in June for cinephiles at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Starting this Friday, TIFF will be launching their new summer series “Dreaming in Technicolor.” For those unaware of the Technicolor process, if you’ve seen any of the films in this series, you should already know about the gorgeous images and colours Technicolor produces. And for all of us here at Way Too Indie, we couldn’t be more excited about this series. TIFF has put together a fantastic lineup of classic films, along with an impressive list of special guests who will introduce special screenings, along with a master class from filmmaker Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg).

The series runs from June to August, and if you happen to be around the TIFF Bell Lightbox this summer, you shouldn’t have any excuse for missing out on these legendary films. Check out the full line-up below, and keep your eyes peeled throughout the summer for some features we’ll be writing about a few of our favourites in the series. To buy tickets, and find out more information about the series, be sure to visit TIFF’s website.

June 19th, 6:30pm – Singin’ in The Rain (35mm print)

“One of the most famous and beloved musicals of all time, Singin’ in the Rain is set in a 1920s Hollywood on the cusp of the sound era, where a swashbuckling matinee idol (Gene Kelly) falls in love with a bright-eyed newcomer (Debbie Reynolds) while trying to duck his jealous, narcissistic onscreen romantic partner (Jean Hagen), whose parrot-squawk of a voice makes her distinctly unsuited for the new talking pictures.”

June 20th, 2pm – Lawrence of Arabia (4K restoration introduced by Grover Crisp, head of film restoration at Sony Pictures)

“Peter O’Toole became an instant star in David Lean’s sprawling adventure epic as the eccentric and inscrutable British officer who rallies the nomadic desert tribes against the Ottoman Turks during World War I.”

June 20th, 7pm – Rope

“Filmed on a single set in a succession of long takes to simulate the sensation of one continuous shot, Alfred Hitchcock’s insidious drawing-room (or rather, dining-room) thriller was one of the director’s most stylistically daring endeavours.”

June 21st, 4pm – Becky Sharp (restored 35mm print)

“Miriam Hopkins received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress as William Thackeray’s indomitable heroine in this sumptuous adaptation of Vanity Fair, which was the first feature film shot entirely in the newly developed three-strip Technicolor system.”

June 21st, 6:30pm – Meet Me in St. Louis

“Minnelli’s much-loved musical classic spans a year in the life of the sizable Smith clan in turn-of-the-century St. Louis, whose youngest members — preening beauty queen Rose (Lucille Bremer), winsome, romantic Esther (Judy Garland), and pint-sized firecracker Tootie (Margaret O’Brien) — are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the 1904 World’s Fair in their city.”

June 23rd, 6:30pm – Bonnie and Clyde (35mm print)

“Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway became instant icons as the famed Depression-era outlaws in director Arthur Penn’s zeitgeist-altering masterpiece.”

June 25th, 8:45pm – Heaven Can Wait (35mm print)

“A recently deceased playboy recounts his lifetime of amorous adventures to a bemused Satan, in Ernst Lubitsch’s charming comedy-fantasy.”

June 27th, 3:30pm – The Wizard of Oz (archival 35mm print)

“The classic fantasy film looks even more spectacular in this magnificent 35mm print, struck during the last revival of the Technicolor dye-transfer process in the 1990s.”

June 28th, 3:30pm – Fiddler on the Roof (introduced by director Norman Jewison)

“Norman Jewison’s beloved, Academy Award-winning adaptation of the internationally acclaimed musical has become a classic for film and theatre lovers alike.”

June 30th, 9pm – All That Heaven Allows

“Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman star in this classic May-December romance which is considered the summit of director Douglas Sirk’s magnificent Technicolor melodramas.”

July 2nd, 6:30pm – Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

“Baby-voiced blonde Marilyn Monroe and brash brunette Jane Russell embark on a European cruise in search of love and loot in Howard Hawks’ classic musical comedy.”

July 2nd, 8:30pm – Charade

“Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn luxuriate in early-’60s chic in Stanley Donen’s Hitchcockian comedy-thriller.”

July 4th, 1pm – The Black Pirate (35mm print)

“The third feature to be shot in the early, two-strip Technicolor process, this high-seas adventure is one of the last great action epics from the swashbuckling sovereign of silent cinema, Douglas Fairbanks.”

July 4th, 4pm – The Adventures of Robin Hood (35mm print introduced by Scott Higgins, author of Harnessing the Rainbow: Technicolor Aesthetics in the 1930s)

“The incomparable Errol Flynn stars as the bandit of Sherwood Forest in the definitive Golden Age swashbuckler.”

July 5th, 3:30pm – The Naked Spur (35mm print)

“A driven bounty hunter acquires unwanted partners as he tries to escort a wanted killer out of the wilderness, in the third and best of five classic westerns pairing director Anthony Mann and star James Stewart.”

July 7th, 6:30pm – Black Narcissus

“A young Mother Superior (Deborah Kerr) struggles with a maelstrom of carnal passions in a mountaintop nunnery near Darjeeling, in this glorious Technicolor fever dream from legendary writing-directing duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.”

July 11th, 6:30pm – The Red Shoes (4K restoration introduced by Bob Hoffman, VP of Marketing and Public Relations for Technicolor)

“Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s tale of a beautiful ballerina caught between her art and her love for a young composer is simply one of the most gorgeous colour films ever made.”

July 12th, 6pm – The Tales of Hoffmann (4K restoration introduced by Bob Hoffman)

“Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s dazzling cinematic envisioning of the Jacques Offenbach opera is even more ambitious and formally adventurous than their celebrated The Red Shoes.”

July 16th, 8:45pm – Bigger than Life

“A gentle schoolteacher (James Mason) is turned into a malevolent monster by the side effects of a cortisone treatment, in Nicholas Ray’s searing critique of 1950s conformity.”

July 18th, 6pm – Magnificent Obsession (Technicolor Master Class taught by filmmaker Guy Maddin)

“A spoiled playboy (Rock Hudson) finds redemption when he sets out to cure the blindness of the woman he loves (Jane Wyman), in this first of Douglas Sirk’s luscious colour melodramas for producer Ross Hunter.”

July 25th, 3:30pm – Rear Window (archival 35mm print)

“James Stewart and Grace Kelly star in Hitchcock’s nerve-wracking study of voyeurism, obsession and murder.”

July 26th, 5:30pm – Apocalypse Now Redux

“Francis Ford Coppola’s hallucinatory Vietnam epic is one of the most ambitious and awe-inspiring war movies ever made.”

August 1st, 3pm – The River (restored 35mm print)

“Jean Renoir’s Technicolor masterpiece chronicles the everyday lives and growing pains of three young women growing up on the Ganges.”

August 2nd, 1pm – The African Queen (4K restoration)

“Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn star in director John Huston’s classic comic adventure film.”

August 2nd, 6pm – The Godfather

“Marlon Brando won (and famously refused) his second Best Actor Oscar as the dignified Don Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s Shakespearean portrait of a powerful Mafia family.”

August 9th, 1pm – Ohayo (Good Morning) (35mm print)

“A remake and update of Yasujiro Ozu’s marvellous silent I Was Born, But…, this delightful satire of fifties consumerism is one of the great Japanese director’s best-loved films.”

August 13th, 8:45pm – The Four Feathers (35mm print)

“Charged with cowardice by his friends, an upper-class non-conformist adopts a native disguise and plunges into the maelstrom of the Madhist war in Sudan, in this spectacular Technicolor adaptation of the venerable adventure novel by A.E.W. Mason.”

The Criterion Collection has made a huge effort of upgrading some of their very best releases to Blu-ray (who says the Blu-ray medium is dying?). The next few months will see Hoop Dreams (still bitter about the Oscar snub…) and Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon upgrades, and now April 2015 features three more.

Sullivan’s Travels

Preston Sturges – Available April 14

One of my favorite movies of all time, I have great memories of watching my Criterion DVD of Sullivan’s Travels. Now, it receives a worthy upgrade to Blu-ray. Preston Sturges, Hollywood’s first writer-director, is at the top of his game, merging slapstick comedy with incredible pathos. The film features a knockout duo in Joel McCrea ans Veronica Lake as a famous filmmaker and failed actress, going on the road to get first-hand research of the human condition for a serious new film. Sullivan’s Travels is a great insight to early Hollywood and why we love movies.

Special Features:

• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary from 2001 by filmmakers Noah Baumbach, Kenneth Bowser, Christopher Guest, and Michael McKean
• Preston Sturges: The Rise and Fall of an American Dreamer (1990), a 76-minute documentary made by Bowser for PBS’s American Masters series
• New video essay by film critic David Cairns, featuring filmmaker Bill Forsyth
• Interview from 2001 with Sandy Sturges, the director’s widow
• Interview with Sturges by gossip columnist Hedda Hopper from 1951
• Archival audio recordings of Sturges
• PLUS: An essay by critic Stuart Klawans

Odd Man Out

Carol Reed – Available April 14

If you can’t pony up the $300+ for Carol Reed’s OOP Criterion Blu-ray of The Third Man, the new release of his earlier film, Odd Man Out is a much cheaper alternative. Starring James Mason on the run after a failed robbery attempt, it is a prime example of classic UK noir.

Special Features:

• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Postwar Poetry, a new short documentary about the film
• New interview with British cinema scholar John Hill
• New interview with music scholar Jeff Smith about composer William Alwyn and his score
• Home, James, a 1972 documentary featuring actor James Mason revisiting his hometown
• Radio adaptation of the film from 1952, starring Mason and Dan O’Herlihy
• PLUS: An essay by critic Imogen Sara Smith

The River

Jean Renoir – Available April 21

One of Jean Renoir’s underseen gems, The River takes the master French filmmaker to beautiful, exotic India. It is the best example of late-period Renoir, wonderfully shot in gorgeous color with the master’s typically magical style. It might be a pretty outdated view of India, but it is a pretty fantastical outsider’s look at a strange land through a light and funny love story.

Special Features:

• High-definition digital transfer from the 2004 Film Foundation restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Archival introduction to the film by director Jean Renoir
• Around the River, a 60-minute 2008 documentary by Arnaud Mandagaran about the making of the film
• Interview from 2004 with Martin Scorsese
• Audio interview from 2000 with producer Ken McEldowney
• New visual essay by film writer Paul Ryan, featuring rare behind-the-scenes stills
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by film scholar Ian Christie and original production notes by Renoir
• New cover by Kathleen Cantwell

Le silence de la mer

Jean-Pierre Melville – Available April 28

If Renoir’s film is too light for you, Criterion has counter-programmed with you in mind. Melville’s feature debut, La silence de la mer, isa sobering morality tale based on an underground novel from the Nazi occupation of France. The film involves a Nazi officer who boards with a French man and his daughter, who deal with his presence with silence. Any fans of Melville’s more popular work will definitely want to check this out.

Special Features:

• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• 24 Hours in the Life of a Clown (1946), Melville’s seventeen-minute first film
• New interview with film scholar Ginette Vincendeau
• Interview with Melville from 1959
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien

The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Peter Yates – Available April 28

A believed example of late American film noir, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a great pairing with Reed’s Odd Man Out as two different takes on cringe and punishment. Starring Robert Mitchum in one of his best roles, it’s a great example of 70’s Hollywood autuerist cinema. After career criminal Eddie gets popped and faces an extended jail sentence, he is forced to contemplate ratting out all his friends. It is also one of the best depictions of crime in the city, showing of the grotesque underbelly of ’70s Boston.

Special Features:

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Peter Yates, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary featuring Yates
• Stills gallery
• PLUS: An essay by critic Kent Jones and a 1973 on-set profile of actor Robert Mitchum from Rolling Stone
• New cover by Michael Boland

Eclipse Series 42: Silent Ozu-Three Crime Dramas

Yasuojiro Ozu – Available April 21

Fans of the Criterion Collection may or may not be familiar with their Eclipse DVD series, which offers great box-set collections of lesser known films otherwise not available on video. In April, the series is releasing three Ozu silent films from the early 1930s: Walk Cheerfully (1930), That Night’s Wife (1930) and Dragnet Girl (1933). Holding up to the Eclipse philosophy, these are three films that are completely in my blindside. Ozu is one of my favorite filmmakers and I’ve always appreciated his silent films, so these should be a treat. This is the third Eclipse set to dip into Ozu’s filmography.