Today, The Grandma is at home relaxing and watching one of her favourite TV series, AmericanHorror Story, and listening to one of her favourite singers whose songs appear on this amazing series, Lana del Rey, the American singer-songwriter who was born on a day like today in 1985.
Elizabeth Woolridge Grant (born June 21, 1985), known professionally as Lana DelRey, isan American singer-songwriter.Her music is noted for its stylized, cinematic quality and exploration of themes of sadness, tragic romance, glamour, and melancholia, containing many references to pop culture, particularly 1950s and 1960s Americana.
Raised in upstate New York, Del Rey moved to New York City in 2005 to begin her music career. Following numerous projects, including her self-titled debut studio album, Del Rey's breakthrough came with the viral success of her debut single Video Games in 2011.
She signed with Interscope and Polydor later that year. Her major label debut, Born to Die (2012), was an international success and spawned Summertime Sadness, a top-ten single on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as the singles Blue Jeans and Born to Die, which charted in several overseas territories.
Del Rey released the EP Paradise in 2012. The next year, Del Rey ventured into film, writing and starring in the music short film Tropico; she released Young and Beautiful as the lead single for the romantic drama film The Great Gatsby (2013).
Del Rey released her third album, Ultraviolence (2014), to critical success. It topped charts and spawned the single West Coast. That same year, Del Rey recorded the eponymous theme for the drama film Big Eyes, which earned a Golden Globe nomination. She released the albums Honeymoon in 2015 and Lust for Life in 2017, the latter topping the US Billboard 200. Her sixth album, NormanFucking Rockwell! (2019), received widespread critical acclaim and two Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year.
In 2019, Del Rey released the singles Doin' Time and Don't Call Me Angel, the latter being a collaboration with Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus for the soundtrack of the film Charlie's Angels (2019). Her follow-up releases included the spoken word album and poetry collection, Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass (2020), and her seventh studio album, Chemtrails over the Country Club (2021). Her upcoming eighth studio album, Blue Banisters, is scheduled for release on July 4, 2021.
Del Rey was born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant on June 21, 1985 inManhattan, New York City, to Robert England Grant Jr., a Grey Group copywriter, and Patricia Ann Pat (née Hill), an account executive at Grey Group. She has one younger sister, Caroline, and one younger brother, Charlie. She was raised Roman Catholic and is of Scottish descent. Her ancestors were from Lanarkshire. When she was one year old, the family moved to the up state New York town of Lake Placid. In Lake Placid, her father worked for a furniture company before becoming an entrepreneurial domain investor; her mother worked as a schoolteacher. There, she attended St. Agnes School in her elementary years and began singing in her church choir, where she was the cantor.
In the fall of 2004, at age 19, Grant enrolled at Fordham University in The Bronx where she majored in philosophy, with an emphasis on metaphysics. She has said she chose to study the subject because it bridged the gap between God and science... I was interested in God and how technology could bring us closer to finding out where we came from and why.
Upon her debut release, Del Rey's music was described as Hollywood sadcoreby some music critics. It has been repeatedly noted for its cinematic sound and its references to various aspects of pop culture; both critics and Del Rey herself have noted a persistent theme of 1950s and 1960s Americana.
Del Rey has received many awards, including 2 Brit Awards, 2 MTV Europe Music Awards, a Satellite Award and 9 GAFFA Awards. Alongside those accolades, she has also been nominated for 6 Grammy Awards and a Golden Globe Award.
I wanted a name I could shape the music towards. I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba -'Lana Del Rey' reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue.
Today, The Grandma has been at home resting and watching TV. She has wanted to pay tribute to one of her favourite actresses, Kathy Bates, who was born on a day like today in 1948.
The Grandma loves mystery and terror films and Kathy Bates has played some of the best roles of these genres in cinema and television. Dolores Claiborne, Misery or American Horror Story are great examples of it.
Kathleen Doyle Bates (born June 28, 1948) is an American actress and director. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, two Primetime EmmyAwards, and two Golden Globe Awards.
Born in Memphis, Tennessee, she studied theatre at the Southern Methodist University before moving to New York City to pursue an acting career. She landed minor stage roles before being cast in her first on screen role in Taking Off (1971). Her first Off-Broadway stage performance was in the 1976 production of Vanities.
Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, she continued to perform on screen and on stage, and garnered a Tony Award nomination for Best Lead Actress in a Play in 1983 for her performance in night, Mother, and won an Obie Award in 1988 for her performance in Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.
Bates' performance as Annie Wilkes in the horror film Misery (1990), marked her Hollywood breakthrough, winning her the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Further acclaim came for her starring role in Dolores Claiborne (1995), The Waterboy (1998), and supporting roles in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) and Titanic (1997); the latter, in which she portrayed Molly Brown, became the highest-grossing film to that point.
Bates received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in Primary Colors (1998), About Schmidt (2002), and Richard Jewell (2019).
Bates' television work has resulted in 14 Emmy Award nominations, including two for her leading role on the NBC series Harry's Law (2011–12).
She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her appearance on the ninth season of Two and a Half Men (2012) and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for her portrayal of Delphine LaLaurie on the third season of American Horror Story (2014). She also received accolades for her portrayal of Miss Hannigan in the 1999 television adaptation of Annie.
Kathy Bates, Misery (1990)
Her directing credits
include several episodes of the HBO television series Six Feet Under
(2001–03) and the television film Ambulance Girl (2005).
Bates was born in Memphis,Tennessee. Her great-great-grandfather was an Irish emigrant to New Orleans, Louisiana, who served as President Andrew Jackson's doctor. She graduated early from White Station High School (1965) and from Southern Methodist University (1969), where she studied theatre and became a member of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority. She moved to New York City in 1970 topursue an acting career.
After moving to New York City, Bates worked several odd jobs as well as minor stage roles while struggling to find work as an actress. At one point, she worked as a cashier at the Museum of Modern Art.
In 1971, Bates was cast in a minor role in the Miloš Forman comedy Taking Off,her first on screen role in a feature film.
After Taking Off was released, Bates didn't work on another feature film until she appeared opposite Dustin Hoffman in Straight Time (1978). Throughout the 1970s, she continued to perform on stage. Her first Off-Broadway performance was in the 1976 production of Vanities. During this time, she also began working in television, starring in a variety of soap operas such as The Doctors, All My Children, and One Life to Live.
Bates' performance in the 1990 horror film Misery, based on the book of the same name by Stephen King, marked her Hollywood breakthrough. The film was a commercial and critical success and her performance as Annie Wilkes was met with widespread critical adulation.
The following year, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress-Motion Picture Drama. The American Film Institute included Annie Wilkes, as played by Bates, in their 100 Heroes and Villains list, ranking her as the 17th most iconic villain and sixth most iconic villainess in film history.
Kathy Bates, Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)
Soon after, she starred in the acclaimed 1991 film Fried GreenTomatoes, based on the novel by comedic actress Fannie Flagg. For her performance in this film, she received a BAFTA Award nomination.
In 1995, Bates played the title character in Dolores Claiborne,another well-received Stephen King adaptation, for which she was nominated for Best Actress at the 22nd Saturn Awards. Bates began working behind the screen as well, as a director, on several television series.
In 1996, Bates received her first Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie, for her performance as Jay Leno's manager Helen Kushnick in HBO's The Late Shift (1996). That role also earned Bates her second Golden Globe Award win in the category of Best Supporting Actress-Series, Miniseries or Television Film and her first Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie. During this time, she also appeared frequently on television.
In 2012, Bates made a guest appearance on Two and a Half Men as the ghost of Charlie Harper on the episode Why We Gave Up Women, which aired on April 30, 2012. This guest appearance resulted in Bates winning her first Emmy Award, in the category of Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series, following nine nominations.
In 2013, she began starring in the American Horror Story series' third season, Coven, as Delphine LaLaurie, an immortal racist who is brought back into the modern world after spending years buried alive. For that role, she won her second Emmy Award, in the category of Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie. Bates claimed that Ryan Murphy, the creator of the series, resurrected her career.
Kathy Bates, American Horror Story (2011)
Bates returned for the fourth season of American Horror Story, Freak Show, this time as Ethel Darling, a bearded lady who performs in a freak show.
She subsequently returned again for the fifth season, Hotel, where she played Iris, the hotel's hateful manager.
Bates returned for her fourth, and the show's sixth season, Roanoke, playing two characters-Thomasin TheButcher White and Agnes Mary Winstead. She received further Emmy Award nominations for each season.
On September 20, 2016, Bates received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her work in the film industry. Her star is located at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard.
In 2017, Bates starred in the Netflix television series Disjointed, in which she played the character of Ruth Whitefeather Feldman, an owner of a California medical marijuana dispensary. The show aired for two seasons.
In 2018, she appeared in two films: in Xavier Dolan's critically panned arthouse film The Death and Life of John F. Donovan and as political activist Dorothy Kenyon in the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic On the Basis of Sex. That year, she also guest-starred in the finale of the 11th season of The Big Bang Theory.
In 2019, Bates portrayed American politician Miriam A. Ferguson in the Netflix film The Highwaymen. She also appeared in the Clint Eastwood film Richard Jewell, playing the mother of the title individual, for which she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe as well as her fourth Academy Award nomination, also in the Best Supporting Actress category.
Today, The Grandma is at home. Times are changing and new ones are arriving but meanwhile this happens we are assisting to the reborn, they never died, of totalitarism, dictatorships and fascist forms of government. It's a normal process when something better and different is going to happen and something old resists to die and to lose privileges and status. The Grandma has been remembering last events of the European history and how closer European citizens are of repeating the mistakes of the past if they aren't brave enough to stop these new forms of totalitarianism, xenophobia, racism and intolerance.
The Grandma is a great fan of American Horror Story (AMS), a TV Series that talks about all these things and helps to think about the future not forgetting the past, learning from them and fighting against the eternal arriving of TheAntichrist, which has a lot of shapes, but only one objective: destruction, isolation and poverty in the name of the ignorance, stupidity and untolerance.
American Horror Story is only a mirror, a reflex of our society with all its problems and some different stories with a common idea, the great struggle between God and Devil to establish their power over a population which is everytime worrier about money and matherialistic things and forget the essence of the Humanity: respect and tolerance. AHS is not very different of Star Wars -fight against the dark forces of the Emperor- or Harry Potter -fight against the dark power of Voldemort-.
Before watching a marathon of American Horror Story, The Grandma has studied the last lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 20).
American Horror Story is an American anthology horror television series created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk. Each season is conceived as a self-contained miniseries, following a different set of characters and settings, and a storyline with its own beginning, middle, and end. Some plot elements of each season are loosely inspired by true events.The only actors to be present in all iterations are Evan Peters and Sarah Paulson with Lily Rabe and Frances Conroy appearing in all but one of the seasons each.
The first season, retroactively subtitled Murder House, takes place in LosAngeles, California, during the year 2011, and centers on a family that moves into a house haunted by its deceased former occupants.
It
centers on the Harmon family: Dr. Ben Harmon, Vivien and their daughter
Violet, who move from Boston to Los Angeles after Vivien has a
miscarriage and Ben has an affair. They move into a restored mansion,
unaware that the house is haunted by the ghosts of its former residents
and their victims.
The second season, subtitled Asylum, takes place in Massachusetts during the year 1964, and follows the stories of the patients and staff of an institution for the criminally insane.
In
1964, at Briarcliff Mental Institution in Massachusetts, Sister Jude
Martin and Sister Mary Eunice McKee maintain the institution that was
founded by Monsignor Timothy Howard to treat and house the mentally and
criminally insane. Psychiatrist Dr. Oliver Thredson, and scientist Dr.
Arthur Arden, treat the patients within the facility, which include
lesbian journalist Lana Winters, accused serial killer Kit Walker, and
alleged murderer Grace Bertrand.
The third season, subtitled Coven, takes place in New Orleans, Louisiana, during the year 2013, and follows a coven of witches who face off against those who wish to destroy them.
Set
in the year 2013, the season follows the dwindling descendants of the
witches who survived the Salem Witch Trials and their struggle to hide
their identity in the modern world. Those who share this genetic
affliction are being subjected to violent attacks from outside forces,
such as voodoo practitioners and witch hunters. Zoe Benson, a young
teenager completely unaware of the existence of witches, discovers her
identity as a Salem descendant after a violent accident that causes the
death of her boyfriend. She is sent to an all-girls boarding school in
New Orleans which aims to protect and house young women who carry this
unique bloodline, and keep them from the dangers of the outside world.
The fourth season, subtitled Freak Show, takes place in Jupiter, Florida,during the year 1952, and centers around one of the last remaining American freak shows and their struggle for survival.
In
Jupiter, Florida in 1952, German expatriate Elsa Mars is the ambitious
owner of one of the last struggling freak shows in the United States,
entitled "Fräulein Elsa's Cabinet of Curiosities," and is seeking her
own fame and stardom. She recruits conjoined twin sisters Bette and Dot
Tattler, whose two heads share one body, as new members of her troupe
after their identification by the police as fugitives since Bette's
recent murder of their overprotective mother during an argument. When
the sisters arrive, they are welcomed by their fellow freaks: Elsa's
subordinate and confidante Ethel Darling the bearded lady, her
lobster-handed son Jimmy Darling, Paul the Illustrated Seal, the
giantess Amazon Eve, the legless Suzi, pinheads Salty and Pepper, the
youngest Meep, and the dwarf performers: ex-convict Toulouse and Elsa's
most significant companion Ma Petite, who is the smallest of the group.
People don't come to see freaks in the heat of day.
They come in the evening. When the darkness moves
in and speaks of mystery. The unknown. When logic loosens
its vice grip and the imagination comes out to play.
The night allows the stars to shine and we come alive.
Elsa Mars, AHS, Freak Show
The fifth season, subtitled Hotel, takes place in Los Angeles, California, during the year 2015, and focuses on the staff and guests of a supernatural hotel.
Set
in the year 2015, the season follows the strange and dangerous
happenings that seem to center around the retro Hotel Cortez in downtown
Los Angeles, California, initially built as a secret torture chamber to
fulfill the violent desires of founder James March. Detective John Lowe
arrives at the hotel, based on intel from an anonymous tip, to
investigate a grisly string of murders, each of which exemplify a sin in
violation of one of the Ten Commandments. He has become estranged from
his wife Alex, who suffers from depression, and his daughter Scarlett,
after the disappearance of their son Holden five years earlier. As the
season unfolds, the Lowes discover that the disappearance of Holden may
be related to the strange activities at the hotel, led by March's
fashionista widow Elizabeth Johnson, also known as the Countess -who was
turned into a vampire by her former lovers, actor Rudolph Valentino and
his wife Natacha Rambova -and her current lover Donovan.
The sixth season, subtitled Roanoke, takes place in North Carolina during the years 2014–2016, and focuses on the paranormal events that take place at an isolated farmhouse haunted by the deceased Roanoke colony.
Set
in the years 2014-2016, the season follows the supernatural events that
occur in a renovated farmhouse in North Carolina, which is situated on
the land where the Roanoke Colony moved after their infamous 1580s
disappearance. In 2015, Shelby Miller, her husband Matt, along with
Matt's sister Lee Harris recount their harrowing experience living in
the farmhouse a year prior in a popular documentary series titled My
Roanoke Nightmare, including their encounters with the ghosts of the
house's previous residents, the violent ghosts of the Roanoke Colony,
the cannibalistic Polk family who live nearby, and the beautiful, yet
terrifying Celtic goddess, Scáthach.
The seventh season, subtitled Cult, takes place in the fictional suburb of Brookfield Heights, Michigan, during the year 2017, and centers on a cult terrorizing the residents in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Set in the year 2017,
the fictional town of Brookfield Heights, Michigan, is left divided upon
the wake of Donald Trump's election as president. Local restaurant
owner Ally Mayfair-Richards is left utterly distraught, along with her
wife Ivy. Despite the help of her psychiatrist, Dr. Rudy Vincent
Anderson, Ally becomes increasingly unstable in the following weeks, as
her long repressed phobias begin to re-emerge, and they begin to affect
her relationships with her wife as well as their son Oz.
Across town,
misogynistic alt-righter Kai Anderson rejoices at the election results,
enticing him to pursue political power by running for city council, led
by radical feminist Bebe Babbitt and with the help of his reluctant,
liberal sister Winter, who the Mayfair-Richards household hire as their
nanny. As Ally attempts to re-adjust to regular life despite her growing
anxiety and paranoia, she becomes terrorized by a group of masked
assailants, donned in clown attire who are only present when she is
alone, leaving those around her to wonder if she was truly attacked, or
if they were merely hallucinations.
You use fear and the fantasy of a time that never was
when people left their doors unlocked.
Sally Keffler, AMS, Cult
The eighth season,
subtitled Apocalypse, takes place in California during the years
2018-2021 and features the return of the witches from Coven as they
battle the Antichrist from Murder House and attempt to prevent the
apocalypse.
In
the near future, the Antichrist, Michael Langdon brings about the
apocalypse by instigating nuclear warfare. The chosen survivors of the
aftermath, heiress Coco St. Pierre Vanderbilt, her personal assistant
Mallory, hairstylist Mr. Gallant, Gallant's grandmother Evie, talk-show
host Dinah Stevens, young adults Timothy Campbell and Emily, amongst
others, take refuge in a fallout shelter named "Outpost 3", run with an
iron fist by Wilhemina Venable and Miriam Mead. Flashbacks to three
years before the apocalypse reveal that "Outpost 3" was an all-boys
warlock school led by John Henry Moore that unknowingly harbored the
Antichrist, in hopes that he would rise as the first ever male Supreme.
The witches' council of Cordelia Goode, Zoe Benson and Myrtle Snow are
summoned and quickly discover how dangerous Michael is to their coven
when faced with his evident powers, as he resurrects deceased witches
Queenie and Madison Montgomery . The coven, with the aid of the
warlocks, attempt to save humanity by discovering new witch Mallory's
intense powers, learning more about Michael's mysterious origins and how
to defeat him to prevent the apocalypse.
Although reception to individual seasons has varied, American Horror Story largely has been well received by television critics, with the majority of the praise going towards the cast, particularly Jessica Lange, who won two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performances. Kathy Bates and James Cromwell each won an Emmy Award for their performances, while Lady Gaga won a Golden Globe Award. The series draws consistently high ratings for the FX network, with its first season being the most-viewed new cable series of 2011.
