Dolly parton

Too bombastic to be country music: Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion reviewed

Grade: B Country music has become the acceptable route through which American pop stars resuscitate their floundering careers: sales are down, kid – shove a fiddle in the next one. And a pedal steel. And git some of those country dudes to collaborate. Especially Dolly. But also Hank Williams Jnr, if you can. Makes them look hip, makes you look real down home. So it is with the agreeably slobbering rapper Post Malone, born in NYC, raised in LA but here sounding like he jes swung in from some roadhouse barstool outta Shreveport, with bourbon and country blood trickling down over his stupid tattoos. His career has hit a hiatus

The art of seizing the moment in photographic portraiture

A Tatler photographer once told me that the secret to taking a good photo was the three Ts: tum, tits, teeth. Suck it in, push ’em out, show your pearly whites. Leaving aside David LaChapelle’s portrait of Pamela Anderson, there’s a shortage of Ts in Phillip Prodger’s Face Time. This looks likea coffee-table book but doesn’t bark like a coffee-table book. On first flick through, I found the pictures desultory, even depressing. I was expecting more of a Condé Nast vibe. Glossy and glossier. On second approach, taking text and pictures together, it became a more interesting beast. Prodger is a former head of photography at the National Portrait Gallery

The art of Dolly Parton’s bra

New York I hope this is my last week in the Bagel. I plan to fly first to Switzerland and then on to London. There’s the annual Pugs Club lunch I cannot afford to miss, but now that Boris is married I don’t suppose he gives a damn about the poor little Greek boy and his club lunches. Incidentally, the little bird has answered my last week’s query about The Spectator bash: the sainted editor is waiting to hear what, yes you guessed it, the new bridegroom premier will allow this summer. Boris doesn’t seem to be able to make up his mind whether the magazine he headed for close

10 films featuring Dolly Parton

After the publication of Sarah Smarsh’s She Come By It Natural, the latest biography of the beloved songstress, here’s a look at Dolly Parton’s career in the movies. Admittedly, Parton’s filmography can be described as patchy (at best), but there are enough hits, curiosities, and why-on-earth-did-she-do-it? duds to merit a retrospective. And who knows – some of those movies previously deemed as clunkers may be worth a second look. Possibly. Before launching into my film rundown, it’s worth mentioning the frequent use of Dolly’s songs in movies other than hers, often used in a contrapuntal fashion. We’ve had 9 to 5 featured in Deadpool 2 (2018), Islands in the Stream in HBO’s Watchmen