Darci Kistler

On Christmas Eve, a little girl named Marie falls asleep and dreams herself into a fantastic world in which her toys become larger than life. She meets up with the Nutcracker Prince who takes her on a journey to his kingdom and defends her from the Mouse King.

Six of George Balanchine's finest stars, Maria Tallchief, Mary Ellen Moylan, Melissa Hayden, Allegra Kent, Merrill Ashley and Darci Kistler pay a moving tribute to the legendary choreographer and tell how he shaped them as dancers and influenced their lives.

Loosely based on a section of Mikhail Lermontov's classic Russian novel of the same title, the film involves a displaced cowboy (played by Kevin Jarre, the screenwriter of Rambo), a sociopathic record producer (Dennis Hopper) and, caught between them, a gum-chewing valley girl who would rather be somewhere else (Natalie Zimmerman). Lermontov's 19th century novel leaves a vapor trail on the action, but A Hero of Our Time is more precisely a portrait of contemporary Los Angeles, a tale of wayward heroism played out against a landscape of yearning and desolation. Director/writer Michael Almereyda, whose screenplay for Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World will be produced this year, completed principal photography for A Hero of Our Time in October of 1985. Dennis Hopper's participation occurred during a break in the filming of Blue Velvet.