Who was best: Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly or Gregory Hines?

Greetings, Mick: Opinion, please. Astaire, Kelly or Hines?

Nora Goldschlager, Hillsborough

Greetings, Nora: It’s not even shut, not even in the identical universe: Astaire.

However then, I don’t notably like Gene Kelly. Too many individuals have favored him for too lengthy for all of them to be faking it, however I don’t get the enchantment. I don’t like his persona, don’t like his dancing, don’t like his films.

As for Gregory Hines, love the man. I noticed him on the Venetian Room on the Fairmont Lodge a couple of hundred years in the past. At one level, he did dance imitations — Astaire, Kelly and few others. He simply incarnated them. He was superb, and an actual loss.

However Fred Astaire for me is greater than a dancer. He was additionally an important singer and certainly one of my formative film obsessions.

Expensive Mick: I beloved your article about your dad. What an important story with message about looking for these inside qualities that don’t all the time present up in your persona.

Chris Lambert, Benicia

Expensive Chris: There’s persona, and there’s essence. Persona could be a behavior, whereas essence represents your potentialities.

When folks placed on a dressing up, they often uncover a special aspect of themselves. And the lesson from this isn’t solely that sporting a dressing up could be liberating; the lesson can be that the persona through which we undergo life is at the least one thing of a dressing up, and we are able to consciously break freed from its restraints by watching our reactions and interrupting unhelpful patterns.

That is simpler stated than achieved. However the Enneagram is attention-grabbing with regard to this — it analyzes human persona as falling into 9 fundamental sorts. There’s a bunch of assessments on-line. I took them and discovered I’m a “Three with a 4 wing.”

Large fan Mick: Simply learn “Santa’s nose.” By the way in which, your mom was sizzling.

Mark Schon, Walnut Creek  

Large fan Mark: My 83-year-old mom was enormously happy to listen to this. She wallowed in, basked in, luxuriated in and just about arrange authorized residence within the glow of your remark. After which, lastly (as I knew she would), she requested me to guarantee everybody that she’s nonetheless sizzling.

Expensive Mick: Did New York Metropolis power Santa Claus to pay a toll to fly over the Verrazzano Bridge?

Andrew Smith, Santa Rosa

Expensive Andrew: Sure, however he has an E-ZPass, so he goes proper by way of.

Expensive Mr. LaSalle: Simply questioning in case you imagine musicals, screwball comedies, horror films, spiritual epics, catastrophe films, Westerns, battle films, science fiction films, romantic comedies, highway films, martial arts films, spy films, B films, parodies, animated films, fantasy films, historic films, superhero films, and political films “would possibly all be overrated at this level” or simply movie noir?

Greg Marriner, Walnut Creek

Expensive Mr. Marriner: Musicals: no. Screwball comedies: sure. Horror films: no. Non secular epics: no. Catastrophe films: no. Westerns: principally sure. Battle films: no. Science fiction: sure. Romantic comedies: no. Highway films: no. Historic films: no. Superhero films: sure, oh, sure. And political films: no.

You requested.

Whats up Mick: I’ve been seeing numerous Lily James these days. Made me suppose that she has the potential to affix the pantheon of Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Vivien Leigh. … Is it too early for her, or do now we have sufficient of a profession to guess at potential?

Ed Williams, Palo Alto

Whats up Ed: Effectively, she has the potential to get actually outdated. And she or he’s pleasant and perhaps might be nice. However let’s let her be younger for some time and let the Dench-hood descend by itself.

Have a query? Ask Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com. Embody your title and metropolis for publication, and a cellphone quantity for verification. Letters could also be edited for readability and size.