John Hughes

The concept of "Players" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11) isn't new. A group of convicts is rounded up and given a shot at redemption. The catch is they have to work for the good guys by doing the jobs too dirty for the good guys to do, like "The Dirty Dozen" or "The A-Team."But producer Dick Wolf ("Law & Order") wraps that concept in some of the freshest and brightest packaging of the fall season ** by casting rapper Ice-T as one of the convicts. His presence helps give "Players" a young, urban feel as well as a puckish sense of humor that should play very well with the teen-age audience at which this series is aimed.

"Flubber" is a flop.It's pointless, soulless, humorless and relentlessly unimaginative. It substitutes special effects for story, makes one of Hollywood's most energetic actors act like he's had a lobotomy and thoroughly trashes an old Disney workhorse ("The Absent-Minded Professor") that many baby boomers remember fondly.Watching this remake may make them doubt their memories; surely, nothing this bad could have descended from anything good.Robin Williams, who must have been either paid a ton of money or blackmailed into taking this role, is the 1997 version of the absent-minded professor.

The best part in "Baby's Day Out" is when they kill the baby.It gets hit by a truck -- here's the funny part -- full of plastic diapers. Splat, dead baby, diapers all over the road! It's a pretty darn goofy laffriot.No, of course they don't kill the baby, but I wish they'd killed the producer or at least slapped him around a little bit. "Baby's Day Out" is another from the exceedingly popular, exceedingly bankrupt movie mill of John Hughes, who once was a serious chronicler of teen angst ("Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club")

Remember the Brat Pack, that very hot "Breakfast Club" of 1980s actors who made youth look like a Coors beer commercial?They were America's favorite image of growing up in the decade of greed. But don't fret if Andrew McCarthy, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Rob Lowe and Ally Sheedy have slipped your mind. Like Duran Duran and Milli Vanilli, they were eminently forgettable. Their movies were soapy. Their dialogue was dippy. Their hair was perfect.Alas, the 1990s is serving up a scruffier, more notable set of young actors.

"Dennis the Menace"1% Starring Walter Matthau and MasonGambleDirected by Nick CastleReleased by Warner Bros.Rated PG... ** John Hughes, who wrote and produced "Dennis the Menace," and Nick Castle, who directed, appear to have searched America high and low and found a child to play the role who looks just like . . . Macaulay Culkin.Unfortunately, Mason Gamble doesn't look much like Dennis the Menace. That he's blond is his only physical resemblance with the archetypal dynamo of American mischief, but he entirely lacks the famous cowlick, the blurry spray of hair that obscured the upper third of Dennis' face and the upturned, pug nose.

Washington -- There's no business as cruel as show business, no business I know.Take the case of Anthony Michael Hall . . . please.Not 10 years ago he was the Macauley Culkin of the '80s. In two successive John Hughes films -- "16 Candles" and "The Breakfast Club" -- his cute freckled face, his thatch of red straw hair, and his ingratiating ways propelled him into the status of American icon. He was the geek as boy next door, Peck's bad boy, Peter Pan and Huck Finn all rolled up into one.And then a terrible thing happened.

Geoff Pickett dreamed all season of playing halfback on the John Carroll soccer squad.And, when his dream came true Friday, it was a nightmare for Boys' Latin.Pickett scored twice in the first half, and his Patriot teammatesheld off a second-half surge from the visiting team for a 2-1 victory in a Maryland Scholastic Association A Conference boys' soccer game.The junior had been playing sweeper this season, but was moved to halfback for the Boys' Latin game."I was constantly trying to give (coach John Hughes)

''Dutch'' is never as bad as its preview might suggest, but then it isn't as good as it could be.The new film was written by the prolific John Hughes (he is to movies what Stephen King is to books), who recently has also done ''Home Alone'' and ''Career Opportunities.''''Dutch'' has some very good scenes; others, unfortunately, just don't work. It also includes some segments that are in questionable taste, but then so did ''Career Opportunities.''The title figure is played with ingratiating charm by Ed O'Neill, star of ''Married . . . With Children,'' the Fox network comedy hit. O'Neill is Dutch Dooley, a self-made contractor who is asked to pick up his girlfriend's son at an Atlanta boarding school and bring him home for Thanksgiving, in Chicago.

You probably think John Hughes' "Curly Sue" is a cute widdle kid movie.But it's a "let's kill all the yuppies" movie.More thematically related to "Regarding Henry" and "The Doctor" than "Annie," it watches as an archetypal '80s figure is mulched, crushed, folded, spindled and mentholated by a sanctimonious '90s sensibility.A question, please, Professor? Why do only rich people like John Hughes and Mike Nichols make movies that point out how vile it is to be rich? The answer, I suppose, is that only rich people make movies at all.Anyway, "Curly Sue" isn't as long on sociological insight as it is on hypocritical blather.

John Hughes writes the best first drafts in Hollywood Unfortunately he doesn't write second drafts, to say nothing of thirds or fourths; he just goes ahead and shoots the first drafts.Thus the latest Hughes opus, "Dutch," from his own screenplay, issued by his own company and directed by an acolyte named Peter Faiman, might be regarded as sadly typical. It's got some nice stuff and some decent performances; but it was about six months' hard work shy of coming together on the first day of production.

FRIDAY POE IN MOTION: Go gothic when Evergreen Museum and Library, 4545 N. Charles St., screens "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Raven" outside at 7:30 p.m. The grounds open at 5:30 p.m., so you can arrive early to take a self-guided tour of the museum's first-floor rooms and see rare illustrated editions of Edgar Allan Poe's works from the Garrett Library. General admission tickets are $6. In case of rain, the event will be held in the Carriage House. Go to nevermore2009.com. JOHN HUGHES '80S TRIBUTE DANCE PARTY: Remember the '80s and classic John Hughes films like "Pretty in Pink" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" at this dance party at Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard St. Don't forget to dress the era, too. Doors open at 9 p.m. There's no cover for this event, and drinks are $2 until 10 p.m. Go to theottobar.

TV soap opera 'Guiding Light' shoots final scenes The cast and crew of "Guiding Light" - U.S. television's longest-running soap opera - have finished shooting their final scenes in a northern New Jersey town. Afterward, they gathered at Peapack Reformed Church for a service to remember the show. The church has served as the site for weddings and funerals in "Guiding Light's" fictional town of Springfield. The Rev. Kathryn Henry recalled that the show's title referred to a lamp put in a church window by the fictional Rev. Rutledge to welcome parishioners seeking guidance.

HOLLYWOOD - - Filmmaker John Hughes burned brightest in the 1980s, when he defined teen angst in terms of the caste system of the suburban high school experience, a thread that others would pick up again and again. His films were talky, in a good way. Like the kids whose stories he was telling, he let them ramble. Teen self-absorption was treated with reverence, not ridicule. The world might make fun of them, their classmates, their bothers and sisters too, but never John Hughes. And a generation of kids and future filmmakers like Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow embraced it. Mr. Hughes, who died Thursday at age 59, was fascinated with the human as outsider.

John Davidson Milligan Hughes Sr., a retired printing executive who was an expert in rollers used on printing presses, died Thursday of a stroke at Oak Crest Village. He was 87. Mr. Hughes was born and raised in Pittsburgh, where he graduated from Dormont High School in 1939. He earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Dartmouth College in 1943. He was employed by Seagrams at its Lawrenceburg, Ind., distillery, and later in the pharmaceutical industry in Harrisburg, Pa., before moving to Baltimore and taking a job in sales with the Harrigan Roller Co. in 1957.

Sydney White presses a lot of ingratiating buttons. It's a good-hearted fish-out-of-water comedy about a girl who refuses to simply go along with the popular flow, it stars an appealing and talented young actress in Amanda Bynes, it gives the usual targets of Hollywood's mean-spirited humor the chance to display a little dignity, and it champions a definition of nonconformity that stretches from cross-dressers to ROTC candidates. The result is a charmer that boldly marches where lesser movies - at least since the heyday of John Hughes - fear to tread.

Keegan and Grace Gaeng can identify with their father's athletic experiences at John Carroll more than two decades ago. Not only have the three played on the same fields, but they also have played for the same coach - John Hughes. Hughes, who has been at the school for 34 years, coached Keegan, a senior, in boys junior varsity soccer. Grace, a sophomore, currently has Hughes as a coach on the girls varsity lacrosse team. Their father, Chris Gaeng, graduated from John Carroll in 1980 and had Hughes as a soccer and lacrosse coach.

On March 11, 2004 WALTER JOHN HUGHES, SR.; devoted father of Walter John, Jr., Michael and Thomas Hughes and Robert Sullivan; grandfather of eight and great grandfather of four. Survived by two brothers and four sisters. Services and Interment were private. Family requests donations in his name be made to the American Cancer Society, P.O. Box 102454, Atlanta, GA 30368.

On Tuesday, October 28, 2003, MRS. MATTIE HUGHES; devoted wife of John Hughes; devoted mother of Dorothy Marshall, James E. Hughes, William H. Hughes and Helen L. Glenn; devoted sister of John Stevenson. Also survived by 12 grandchildren; 26 great-grandchildren; two great-great grandchildren and a host of nieces and nephews. Friends may call at the Loudon Park Funeral Home, 3620 Wilkens Ave., on Sunday from 2 to 5 P.M. Funeral services will be held 11:00 A.M., Monday, November 3 at Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witness, 4600 Rokeby Rd., Baltimore.

"Flubber" is a flop.It's pointless, soulless, humorless and relentlessly unimaginative. It substitutes special effects for story, makes one of Hollywood's most energetic actors act like he's had a lobotomy and thoroughly trashes an old Disney workhorse ("The Absent-Minded Professor") that many baby boomers remember fondly.Watching this remake may make them doubt their memories; surely, nothing this bad could have descended from anything good.Robin Williams, who must have been either paid a ton of money or blackmailed into taking this role, is the 1997 version of the absent-minded professor.

The concept of "Players" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11) isn't new. A group of convicts is rounded up and given a shot at redemption. The catch is they have to work for the good guys by doing the jobs too dirty for the good guys to do, like "The Dirty Dozen" or "The A-Team."But producer Dick Wolf ("Law & Order") wraps that concept in some of the freshest and brightest packaging of the fall season ** by casting rapper Ice-T as one of the convicts. His presence helps give "Players" a young, urban feel as well as a puckish sense of humor that should play very well with the teen-age audience at which this series is aimed.