TO BE MY SUNSHINE AFTER THE RAIN (AND THE WINTER, WHICH IS COMING): For their Comic-Con panel today, the Game of Thrones team produced perhaps the greatest Necrology video ever.

IS THIS BECAUSE I'M A LESBIAN?  Former Senator, Presidential Candidate, and Law & Order DA Fred Thompson will make his Broadway debut as the judge in the Broadway straight play adaptation of John Grisham's A Time To Kill.  (Adaptation is by Rupert Holmes, who is both the man behind "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" and a much-honored theatre playwright and composer.)

GIVE ME AUDRA OR GIVE ME DEATH: So, allegedly, Grace in the upcoming hip-hop version of Annie will be played by Rose Byrne.  Byrne's done solid work both dramatic (Damages) and comedic (Bridesmaids), and seems like a solid enough choice.

HEY HEY HEY HEY: How powerful is "Blurred Lines?"  Powerful enough that it can get even Rahm Emanuel to dance.  No comment yet from @MayorEmanuel, though. 

PRECEDENT IS NOT DEAD, BUT IT CERTAINLY STILL IS PAST: Following up on Matt's story from October, a federal district court judge in Mississippi has tossed on fair use grounds the William Faulkner estate's copyright suit over the borrowing of a nine-word aphorism in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris: "The copyrighted work is a serious piece of literature lifted for use in a speaking part in a movie comedy, as opposed to a printed portion of a novel printed in a newspaper, or a song’s melody sampled in another song. This transmogrification in medium tips this factor in favor of transformative, and thus, fair use."

ETA, by Matt:  Please also note that the full opinion thanks the parties that they "did not ask the court to compare The Sound and the Fury to Sharknado," thus guaranteeing that "Sharknado" will have at least one hit in ALLFEDS searches.

ALOTT5MA STYLE GUIDE UPDATE: Jay-Z is now Jay Z.

AND I SWEAR TO YOU THAT THOSE WHO DO NOT VOTE FOR ME WILL DIE SCREAMING:  Emmy nominations are out, and there's much to say. I'm going to focus more on the quirks than the top categories, and supplement this as needed:

• First-time nominees include Kerry Washington, Emilia Clarke, Carrie Preston, and Harry Hamlin.
• Eric Stonestreet becomes the first Modern Family actor to fail to be Emmy-nominated since Ed O'Neill was skipped in the first season. The other three get to go up against Stefon, Tony Hale, and Adam Driver. (Third straight year they passed on NPH.)
• No Kingslayer. No Tatiana Maslany. No Corey Stoll. And no Rob Lowe love for Behind the Candelabra, or David Lynch for Guest Actor on Louie? Really?
• Eight different individual nominations for Louis C.K., five for Tina Fey (including lyrics to "The Rural Juror"), and three for Anthony Bourdain.
• Christine Baranski yes, Archie Panjabi no.  This is correct.
• Much love for 30 Rock's final season, including Best Comedy, Tina Fey, Jane Krakowski, Will Forte (!!) in guest, writing noms for each half of the finale ...
• Survivor gets no love other than in the tech categories. Amazing Race, however, again, yeah.
• Jonathan Banks' first nomination since 1989, when he was supporting on Wiseguy and lost to Larry Drake ("Benny") from L.A. Law.
• Parks and Rec was only nominated for Amy Poehler and Sound Mixing.

Sepinwall: "[T]hese aren't the exact nominees I'd have chosen, but it's a far less egregious list than we've had in some other years."

MZS: "If Jonathan Banks doesn't win Best Supporting Actor for playing Mike on Breaking Bad, the award means nothing, and the word acting means nothing, and maybe everything means nothing, and we should all just go die in the tall grass." 

PRESIDENT'S LANDING:  Take the Architect of the Capitol's CGI'd visual timeline of the building of modern DC over the past 200 years, add the GoT theme music, and, wow.

NUMBER SIX IS THE SRIRACHA WATERFALL:  Five delicious ways to hack a chocolate fountain. (Note: ALOTT5MA Mgmt makes no nutritional representations regarding the contents of the linked article.)

THEY'RE REPLACEABLE. WE CAN GET DAVID ALAN GRIER AND MISS PIGGY: Tomorrow morning, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences will announce the nominees for the 2013 Emmy Awards. What would make you most delighted to see recognized?

THUS EXPLAINING THE SUCCESS OF GROWN UPS 2:  New York City is in the midst of a major heat wave, and the New York Post is reporting that folks are saying that they'll see a movie just to get into some overpowering AC.  (See also Linda Holmes' "how hot does it have to be before I'll see this movie just for the AC" thermometer from 3 years ago.)  Fortunately, there are a number of decent options, so you don't have to resort to Grown Ups 2, and I give credit to the lady in the article who inadvertently chose Indian film Bhaag Milka Bhaag, since it has a 3+ hour run time.

MAYBE YOU DON'T CARE:  I wasn't sure if we were due for a Song of the Summer check-in yet, but now that Robin Thicke has performed a soulful cover of Icona Pop's "I Love It" for the BBC, oh, it's on.  What's your jam these days? Is "Blurred Lines" (with or without boobies) Thicke's best song since he decided that Beethoven's Fifth needed lyrics, or "kind of rapey"?

HANS ... BUBBIE ... I'M YOUR WHITE KNIGHT:  Is there anything left to be said about Die Hard upon its twenty-fifth birthday today? Maybe, says MZS:

More often than not, what's being made fun of is machismo itself. Man after man gets wounded or dies because he gives into rage, complacency or cockiness. The FBI guys Johnson and Johnson ("No, the other one") might have been the heroes in a different, less interesting film; look at how they run roughshod over everyone, inadvertently helping Hans' plans come to fruition. The coke-snorting Yuppie Ellis gets shot because he bought his own Master-of-the-Universe hype and thought of the hostage situation as another deal that he could negotiate, like a merger or acquisition. Hans' minions tend to think with their adrenal glands instead of their brains, particularly Alexander Godunov's Karl, who's so driven by the need to avenge his brother's death at the hero's hands that he can't think beyond the next five minutes. None of these men are as fearsome as they imagine. 

Bonus!  Vulture lists the twenty-five best post-Die Hard action films, more or less. (It's only one-per-franchise, and they forgot Face/Off, which is absurd. Both in the since that the film is absurd, and that it's absurd to exclude it from the list.)

NOT GREAT, LIZZIE!  During his Mad Men hiatus, Vincent Kartheiser is playing Mark Darcy in a stage production of Pride & Prejudice in Minneapolis.

WHAT'CHOO TALKIN' ABOUT, "WILLIS"?  Too many bullet points on my recently completed one-week sojourn through Chicago and the Wisconsin Dells with the girls:

• We got lucky on Chicago weather last week. My goodness. 80 and not-humid at Taste of Chicago Wednesday night to meet some friends at the free fun. concert?
• Cannot say enough good things about CityPass. Had the attractions we were going to do anyway, at a good discounted price, and the ability to skip the entrance line at the Shedd Aquarium alone was worth quite a bit.
• Cannot say enough good things about the Museum of Science and Industry, which I hadn't been to since Law School. Spacious, full of interactive stuff for the kids, and educational on top of it.
• The Shedd Aquarium, on the other hand, was way too crowded, didn't seem to have much of any educational value at all, just a constant look at this fish! now look at that fish! But the kids liked it.

LIVING IN A LONELY WORLD: Cory Monteith was—it just seems wrong to say was about a 31-year-old, doesn't it?—perfectly cast as Finn Hudson on Glee, conveying enthusiasm, decent singing talent, naïveté, and not necessarily a whole lot of brightness in a package that couldn't help but remind you of his fellow Canadian, Keanu Reeves.

His sudden death reminds us of two things: that there's little way to tell whether you're psychologically equipped for massive fame before you're thrust into it; and that while your parents can provide a clue, you might never know before it's too late that you don't have an off switch when it comes to consuming certain substances which seem awesome in the moment. Put the two together, and this is a sad story which will keep repeating.