HBO, 8:00 p.m. ET
SPECIAL PREMIERE: This new TV version of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book about race and racism expands the concept of the stage play, which employed several voices to read from, and bring to life, the vibrant viewpoints in Coates’ book. The play premiered at the Apollo Theater in Harlem – a perfect launching pad – and this new HBO version, potentially reaching millions on its HBO and HBO Max platforms, injects its Between the World and Me with even more star power. Phylicia Rashad, Courtney B. Vance, Angela Davis (yes, that Angela Davis) and Oprah Winfrey (yes, that Oprah Winfrey) are among the participants reciting Coates’ words and warnings.
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Time machines are one of the most cherished tropes in the sci-fi genre – and though time machines to do not figure in either of the pivotal sci-fi films shown tonight as a double feature by TCM, they do allow us to take a time-machine trip of sorts. They allow us to watch, in sequence, futuristic films by two of their generation’s most innovative and influential filmmakers: Stanley Kubrick and George Lucas. So imagine you’ve just set your Wayback Machine, and start with 1968, when Kubrick befuddled and dazzled the world with his classic sci-fi trip, 2001: A Space Odyssey. When it premiered, and when I saw it that opening day, the actual year of 2001 was still 33 years in the future – a third of a generation away. One lengthy sequence involved a space shuttle to a lunar base, at a time when man landing on the moon was still a year away. And now, we’re close to 20 years removed from the actual 2001 – and so much of the science in the Arthur C. Clarke-Stanley Kubrick collaboration has held up amazingly well. 2001: A Space Odyssey made Kubrick a recognized and powerful auteur for the rest of his life – and with good reason. Watch from the start, with the lights off and the sound up, on as big a TV as you have. And then, after the climax, think and argue about it all over again.
TCM, 10:45 p.m. ET
In 1971, three years after Stanley Kubrick directed and co-wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, a young filmmaker named George Lucas directed and co-wrote his own sci-fi movie, called THX 1138. It’s about a repressive future where a man and woman decide to rebel, and the man is played by Robert Duvall, a year before Lucas’s filmmaking friend, Francis Ford Coppola, cast him in The Godfather. And two years after filming THX 1138, Lucas directed and co-wrote American Graffiti, which featured, in a small supporting role, another young actor, Harrison Ford. Then, four years after that, Lucas stunned the world in 1977 the way Kubrick had done in 1968, by releasing a little film then titled, simply, Star Wars. Watch the genesis of all that, and the links to Kubrick, tonight, as TCM presents THX.