So let's review: another unpredictably blazing hot summer is right around the corner, we're in the midst of what everyone is too terrified to call a depression but actually is, and the overall stress level on the metaphorical street is higher than the entire cast of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Feeling down and out? Dispirited? Discombobulated? Depressed? Buddy, so are we, which is why the arrival in our in-box of The Paramount Theater's 2009 Summer Film Series comes as such a blessed relief. Long an air-conditioned oasis of 24 fps classiness in the midst of our city's scorched earth-meets-subtropical summertime sultriness, The Paramount has been sating the appetites of Austin's cineastes and slackers for 34 years. You can download a .pdf file of the entire series calendar here. This year they're kicking things off in high style for low times with a pre-party on Thursday, May 21, for traditional series opener Casablanca, which means you can help help yourself to complimentary drinks, popcorn, and Moroccan-themed appetizers by becoming a member of their Film Fan Club. They've also taken into account that "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?" is back on top of charts (in our heads if not on our radios, yet), and programmed bad times/good movies sub-fest called "Good Times from the Great Depression."

In celebration of the Round Rock Express' 10th year of playing hard ball they are teaming up with the Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek to offer special Sunday screenings of some classic baseball films. These screenings are special because players from the Express will be on hand to meet fans and sign autographs. The only catch is that tickets are available only at the Dell Diamond during home games. The tickets are free. The Sandlot gets things rolling this Sunday, April 26 at the Lake Creek Alamo with the player meet-and-greet session beginning at 7pm. Up next in the series is one of the greatest baseball films of all time, Bull Durham. It almost makes you forget about every other awful Kevin Costner movie ever made (including 1999's monotonous For Love of the Game). Almost. Bull Durham screens Sunday, May 24 and patrons 18 and under must be escorted by an adult.

Nice break for the capitol press corps this morning: A quick field trip to Troublemaker Studios, the movie-making base of Robert Rodriguez, for some film-related hob-nobbing and some celebrity bill-signing. With the vehicles from Grindhouse as a backdrop, Gov. Rick Perry signed HB 873, the long-awaited reform of the Texas film incentive program. Bill author Rep. Dawnna Dukes, D-Austin, was there, along Rodriguez and game guru Richard Garriott. From the lege there was bill co-sponsor Sen. Robert Deuell, R-Greenville, and Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, who has his own film-related bill, SB 1929 in the works, giving tax incentives for production facilities. But enough about the lawmaking: What film news was there? NBC has confirmed Friday Night Lights will stay in Austin for "at least two years," Dukes said. Rodriguez confirmed his upcoming slate: To rapturous applause every time he name-dropped a project, he announced that because of the incentive boost, "I'm going to be able to shoot my upcoming Machete here, a sci-fi action film called Nervewrackers, a re-boot of the Predator series called Predators, and a couple of smaller movies called Sin City 2 and The Jetsons." Check back later today for footage from the bill signing.

Joe O'Connell, the Chronicle's film-industry columnist, is a man so often wrapped in old-school celluloid or awash in hi-def pixels by way of making a living, you'd think he had fuck-all time for anything else. He wouldn't be the man to win an award for crafting an excellent prose novel, for instance. Except that he would. He's the winner of the 2009 North Texas Book Festival Book Award in adult fiction, awarded on April 17, up there in Denton. His novel-in-stories, Evacuation Plan, published by Austin-based Dalton Publishing, reveals a segmented narrative of the terminally ill, the patients’ families, and those who care for the dying. His book's an excellent, thought-provoking diversion from our own inevitable plummet toward the grave, and we highly recommend it to you, the living.

It's been rumored for years, but supposedly, finally, totally for real this time: The State is coming to DVD on July 14. Don't recognize the name? You'll recognize the faces – from Stella, Reno 911, Wet Hot American Summer, Role Models, The Baxter, Veronica Mars, Ed, and on and on – they all got their start on the short-lived MTV sketch show from the comedy troupe of the same name. Doesn't this sound like something the Alamo Drafthouse – that holy temple of super-celebrity-guests and all-things-marathon – should be all over? A girl can dream, at least... (link love: matt dentler's indiewire blog)

Like film? Like in-depth discussion of immigration reform? Then keep Friday afternoon clear. There will be a special free screening of The Least of These, Clark and Jesse Lyda's documentary about the infamous T. Don Hutto Residential Center, the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement facility in Williamson County, in the Capitol. The film ran as part of SXSW earlier this year and is back as part of the Cine las Americas film festival. The free screening takes place on Friday April 24 at 2 pm in the Texas Capitol Extension Auditorium (Room E1.004.) Clark Lyda, ACLU of Texas Policy Analyst Laura Martin, and Bob Libal of Grassroots Leadership will be in attendance. The event is sponsored by Reps. Elliott Naishtat, D-Austin, and Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, and may give some traction to House Concurrent Resolution 95, their call to get ICE to use family detention only as a last resort. If you can't make that, there's another screening at the Mexican American Cultural Center (600 River) at 6pm on Monday, April 27, followed by a Q&A with the directors, Barbara Hines of the UT Law School, and Lisa Graybill, legal director of the ACLU of Texas.

Maybe all art is derivative. But sometimes, rarely, after what genius hath wrought filters down through a few generations of American culture, the inevitable spawn, so often a diluted bastard of its inspiration, actually beats the original at its own game. HBO's Grey Gardens, the anticipated bio pic of Edith "Big Edie" Ewing Bouvier Beale and Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale, accomplishes just that rare feat. The source material in this case is the groundbreaking 1975 documentary of the same name by Albert and David Maysles, filmed during a particularly hot summer at Grey Gardens, the Beales' derelict family estate in East Hampton, New York. The release of the grainy film, which examines the once haute, now absent-mindedly squalid lives of an eccentric, but still bitingly observant mother and daughter, announced a brash new approach to what was then called cinéma vérité, and brought a cult following to the Edies, who were no less fascinating in 1975 for being the forgotten Bouvier relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy. After all these years, and all of the flies on the wall it inspired, we continue to rubberneck at the Maysleses' documentary …

After four days of sitting on the Senate intent calendar, House Bill 873, the film incentive reform bill, has passed through the Senate on a 27-1 vote. Chatting briefly with bill author Rep. Dawnna Dukes, D-Austin, and she put it simply. "It finally passed," she said with a grin. She confirmed what Senate sponsor Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, said yesterday: That due to an administrative error, it had been put at the top of the Senate intent calendar, and a House bill at the top of the agenda is a blocking bill, so that had to be fixed. The Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program was actually founded in 2005, but went unfunded until 2007, when the lege dropped $22 million into the kitty. But after criticism that applications were too complex for too little pay-out to be competitive, Dukes came back to clean up those problems. The new rules ups the biennial pay-out to $62 million, improves the pay-out, and does more to attract TV, adverts and video game production. The bill now heads to the governor for signing.

For a bill that everyone likes, House Bill 873, the film incentive reform package, seems to be taking a long time to get passed. It was supposed to come up for a vote in the Senate today, but that's been shoved back a day. Grabbing a quick word with Senate sponsor Sen. Robert Deuell, R-Greenville, and he explained that there's no real opposition. The problem is purely administrative: It had been put at the top of today's intent calendar this morning, but a House bill can't be top of the calendar. So that means it had to be pulled, and will be back tomorrow – in the correct part of the running order. On the positive side, Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, has now signed on as a co-sponsor. West had been unhappy with the earliest House draft of the bill because it excluded metropolitan Dallas from the definition of "underutilized and economically distressed area." With that section struck out, he's fully on-board. Bonus for Travis County: That also mean metropolitan Austin is included again.