In case you missed our interview with documentarian Joe Berlinger, his latest politically-charged picture Crude screens tonight, April 25, at 6pm at the Regal Metropolitan as part of the Cine las Americas festival. Berlinger was also the man behind the camera for Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. He and his long-time collaborator Bruce Sinofsky got to know Hetfield et al while making his justice-seeking documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders of Robin Hood Hills. That lead to him getting unprecedented access for his 2004 rock doc about the biggest metal band in the world. Austin Chronicle: You started making Crude before the Chevron pollution case became an international scandal, and Some Kind of Monster before Metallica nearly imploded. Right place, right time? Joe Berlinger: There's been a huge string of luck in my career. That's definitely something that's hard for me to explain. The first time I was sitting filming a therapy session for Metallica, that was right after my complete and utter failure on Blair Witch 2, where I got eviscerated by the press, I think a little too hard. I certainly took it hard.

It's not every day that the press gets to hang out Troublemaker Studios, the East Austin production facility for Robert Rodriguez. But since yesterday was signing day for HB 873, the big film incentive reform bill from Rep. Dawnna Dukes, D-Austin, it was time to bust out the best schmoozing shoes. Possibly it was being so close to the Sikorsky from Grindhouse, but the Chronicle briefly caught the film-making bug and shot some footage. [video-1]

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 …