a boy and his dog

Who doesn't love A Boy and His Dog? People who haven't seen A Boy and His Dog, that's who. After all, I'm fairly certain it is a metaphysical impossibility for anyone not to get a kick out of a post-apocalyptic movie about a teenager (Don Johnson) and his telepathic dog who wander the junk-laden wastelands of the future looking for women and food. Well now Quiet Earth tells us an animated remake of sorts is in the works.

The man stewing it all together is My Suicide director David Lee Miller. Details are a little scarce at this point, so it's unclear whether Miller's A Boy and His Dog is a remake of Jones' film or Harlan Ellison's novella that it was based off of. If it's the latter, hopefully this time around we might see some of the mutated fallout victims the book mentioned that Jones' film never does.

With a tentative 2012 release date, this animated A Boy and His Dog is a ways away, but we'll be keeping our eyes peeled for any kind of clues as to the animation style, voice talent, and so forth.

This week finally sees the release of Youth in Revolt, the film version of C.D. Payne's 1993 novel. Considering the book's length (about 500 pages), director Miguel Arteta and screenwriter Gustin Nash faced the unenviable task of deciding what should remain and what should be excised. How do you make a 90-minute film that pleases the novel's legion of fans while remaining accessible to a larger audience that has never read it?

It's a challenge familiar to sci-fi fans. We've probably all experienced that moment of utter disbelief that a favorite story or novel has been twisted and mangled beyond recognition. But when the filmmakers get it right, honoring the spirit and creating a work that lives apart from its inspiration, it's magical. Regrettably, I don't read as many novels nowadays as in my earlier years, so I've never read the source material for some of my favorite science fiction films (e.g. Children of Men, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Planet of the Apes). Still, it was difficult to narrow my choices down to just ten. Here's what I ended up with: a list of my ten favorite sci-fi adaptations. What are yours?

1. Slaughterhouse-Five
Screenwriter Stephen Geller took on a near-impossible job, adapting Kurt Vonnegut's wondrous novel, which was inspired by Vonnegut's real-life experiences during World War II. Oddly enough, George Roy Hill's direction is as sprightly as you'd expect from the man whose previous film was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Yet Hill's jaunty approach was exactly the right way to capture the spirit, the basic trajectory, and much of the flavor of the novel, producing a picture that feels both tied to the year in which it was released (1972) and transcendent of time and place.

My invitation to an early screening of James Cameron's Avatar got lost in the mail (cough, cough), so I'm just as eager as the rest of the world to see what a little imagination -- and $250 million -- has wrought when the flick finally opens in theaters tomorrow. We may never know the actual budget of Avatar, but if it delivers on the early buzz, we won't care. Money talks, but it doesn't guarantee that good scripts will be written or that actors will give good performances or that directors will find new ways to surprise and amaze us.

Here are ten sci-fi films from the past 40 years that delivered the biggest bang for the buck, in my estimation. Some had micro budgets, while others had $30-35 million at their disposal, yet still exceeded expectations, delivering thrills and chills that rank among the very finest the genre has to offer. As it happens, the list is weighted toward more recent fare, so feel free to share your favorite 'bang for the buck' sci-fi flicks.

1. Timecrimes
One of SciFi Squad's best science fiction films of the decade, Nacho Vigalando's stylish thriller gets tremendous mileage out of its simple concept: a man travels in time and wrecks increasing havoc upon himself. The script is clever, intelligent, thoughtful, and entirely logical as it plays out the consequences of the man's actions, progressing from lighthearted playfulness to something darker and richer. The film is aided immensely by Karra Elejalde's performance as that ordinary man caught up in extraordinary circumstances.

* The headline became too unwieldy, but, just so you know, my original title was: "The Top Ten Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Flicks With Dogs, Hot Chicks, Robots, or Zombies." Please consider the following list accordingly!

In these difficult economic times, it's encouraging to see that hundreds of people found gainful employment destroying the world (again). Roland Emmerich's 2012 opens tomorrow and apparently employed every living soul who knows how to create havoc on the big screen. The trailer promises large-scale destruction of well-known landmarks, a prescient, disheveled, very concerned parent / ex-husband (John Cusack), and last-second narrow escapes. That doesn't sound too familiar, does it?

Meanwhile, The Road, which finally opens November 25, stars Viggo Mortensen in an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's bleak, devastating novel about a father and son trudging through a post-apocalyptic world with nary a glimmer of hope. Between those two extremes -- popcorn and pessimism -- lie my favorite kind of post-disaster flick: reasonable possibilities in a world forever changed -- but still with dogs, hot chicks, robots, or zombies.

1. Mad Max 2 (AKA The Road Warrior)

George Miller pushed Max (Mel Gibson) to the edge in the first film; in the sequel, Max well illustrated the changes wrought upon ordinary people by extraordinary circumstances, as the family man was transformed into the ultimate loner, an action hero for the new millenium. Thrills, chills, and missing heartbeats play out amidst the carnage of last-chance heroes and the bewildered affection of a feral child. At least Max had his dog.