Casting Movies: My wife and I were lamenting the awful, awful casting choices that are inevitably made when Hollywood remakes old TV shows and movies into new movies.

Part of the problem comes from the difficulty in recreating the spirit and feel of the original. Rather than try it and fall short, most filmmakers opt for the option of ridiculing or paroding the source material. "Yeah, this movie is stupid, but so was the show everybody liked!" seems to be the message behind these movies.

I hate those. I refuse to watch The Brady Bunch Movie or Starsky and Hutch for this reason.

People who make those movies should take their cue from The Fugitive, and try to do everything the original series did as well as they can.

What got the conversation going was the new Bewitched movie coming out. Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell are completely wrong for both parts.

Elizabeth Montgomery's appeal was that she was girl-next-door cute and seemed so down to earth, that you fell in love with her despite her being a witch who kept allowing her Mom in the house even after she had turned her husband into pigs and stuff. Nicole Kidman is way to "movie star" to capture the spirit of the show, and I'm guessing she's going to come across as unlikeable, because if the filmmakers understood why we all liked Samantha, they wouldn't have picked her to begin with.

Darren's primary job was to scream and mug. Will Ferrell is about as capable of mugging as I am of flying to the moon. Every character he plays comes across as so desperate and forced--I have no idea why anybody thinks he's funny. So he's not going to be believable in the role.

So who would I cast? I don't know. I was kind of thinking of Ray Romano as Darren, or maybe Bill Pullman. What about Samantha? I don't know. Wholesome girl-next-door isn't a hot commodity in actresses these days.

What about other movies?

The A-Team: This one's going down right now, and if they do it up as a semi-parody like Charlie's Angels, I'll have to shoot somebody. They need to take it as seriously as they can.

For Hannibal, I've always thought Mel Gibson would be perfect for the cigar-chomping leader of the group. However, after Braveheart and The Patriot and now Passion, I don't think he's making this kind of movie any more, and, quite frankly, more power to him. Which leaves me with Tommy Lee Jones, the actor I love for his ability to take anything, no matter how stupid, very, very seriously.

B.A. is obvious--Michael Clarke Duncan. He's sort of become Hollywood's generic "Big guy," and he's able to pull off both "mean big guy" and "lovable big guy" so I think that's a no-brainier.

The Face Man, Templeton Peck, is a tough one for me. As much as I hate him, Ben Affleck would actually do pretty well in the role. Denzel Washington would tear it up, but I think he's a little too high-dollar an actor to play a second-tier role. But I like to think of the show as an ensemble, rather than a star-driver.

And what about Murdock? Who should play the Howling Mad one?

This is actually the casting choice I fear the most. Who will the casting folks stick in this role? My guess is that it will be Will Ferrell, because I think it's in his contract that he's required to have at least some role in every movie made right now. Any SNL alum would be a nightmare. Rob Schnieder? I'd rather shoot myself. Chris Kattan? Please. The only SNL alum I could see in the part is Dana Carvey.

The no-brainier choice for the role is one I don't think I like in the role, and that's Jim Carrey. Carrey lacks the credibility that Dwight Schultz brought to the role. Especially as a kid, when Murdock would walk an invisible dog, there was a part of me that always sort of suspected that maybe there was a dog there, and Murdock wasn't crazy so much as he knew something the rest of us didn't. There was even a dignity in his madness--even as he'd be wearing flight goggles and a red cape, he'd carry himself like it was stone cold serious. It was great, and it's a subtlety of performance Jim Carrey couldn't capture if you gave him a net.

So I don't know. Maybe Ryan Stiles?

Subtlety isn't a hot commodity in Hollywood these days, either.