There’s something mysteriously positive about the idea of shooting sequels back-to-back. It makes it seem as though the filmmakers have a definitive plan that will come together as a singular vision instead of a third film slammed into production by the machine despite almost no resemblance to the characters we fell in love with in prior installments. It seems that way, but it doesn’t always work that way. For each Lord of the Rings there’s a Pirates of the Caribbean. Now, James Cameron is tossing his ship out into the ocean to join those crews that went before him – promising that Avatar 2: Organically Electric Boogaloo and Avatar 3 will be shot together and released one year apart.

Quick, name one historical figure you’d love to see brought to the big screen in glorious, big budget 3D. If you said Harold Lloyd then pat yourself on the back because that would indeed make for an entertaining 3D biopic, but apparently no one but us thinks it’s a good idea. Instead, Hollywood is returning to the well of cinematic epics from days gone by and is preparing to dust one off for an update of sorts… and they’ve got some pretty big heavy hitters already interested. Per Deadline Kapuskasing, Sony Pictures is extremely keen on making a big budget Cleopatra film, and they may already have a director and star in place. Angelina Jolie has long spoken of her desire to play the role of Egypt’s final pharaoh, and many people consider her exotic looks and apparent charisma to make her a natural for such a powerful and well known historical character. On the other side of the camera Sony has garnered the attention of James Cameron. Interest has piqued most recently thanks to a new script from Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential) based off the recent bestseller, Cleopatra: A Life, by Staci Schiff, that paints the formidable ruler in a far different light than people are used to. This will not be Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra…

Every so often, a film emerges from the fray to prove its popularity and warrant a sequel. More and more, franchises are planned out in advance, but when one film turns into a franchise, a cash register sound goes off in the ears of the studio. Even though the kid stays in the picture, sometimes the director does not. Maybe the director is done working with the material. Maybe the producers want a more seasoned hand. Maybe a simple schedule conflict keeps him or her out of the chair for the next round up. But the show must go on, so the producers find another director to fill the slot – a director who ostensibly inherits all the strengths and weaknesses of a franchise birthed by someone else. Cinematic sloppy seconds that could have easily turned into sloppy sequels if it weren’t for a steady, talented director guiding the ship. Here’s a list of the ten best.

With this week, Summer 2010 has officially gone. We are into September and here in Austin at Reject HQ, the temperature is back down into the 90s and we’re looking forward to seeing all of our genre-loving friends at the end of the month for Fantastic Fest. As you’ll begin to notice, we will soon become very preoccupied with what’s happening in the war room over at the Alamo Drafthouse, where the final slate for Fantastic Fest 2010 seems to be coming together quickly. But for now, there are still films in theaters and news from around the globe that have caught our interest. That interest was quickly turned into articles filled with biting commentary. Those articles are assembled here, in a weekly column we like to call The Week That Was…

A hearty welcome back to all of you faithful readers of Junkfood Cinema, confused as you may be by the day-late nature of this week’s entry. As you were told in last week’s most excellent entry by Mrs. Junkfood Cinema, Brian is taking some time off in the month of September, so a hand-picked group of Rejects will be keeping the lights on in one of our most prized columns with a series of guest entries. This week, it is my turn. Which meant two things: it gave me the opportunity to introduce our resident Schlocktologist Mr. Salisbury and his ever-bearded compatriot Luke Mullen to one of my own favorite instances of cinematic indigestion, and that the column would be a day late — because that’s how I roll. (In reality, the day late problem occurred due to the fact that I was moving this week and may or may not have misplaced my copy of Lady Terminator in the move.) Thankfully, I was able to extract my copy of Lady Terminator from the wreckage of my recent move and host a Friday evening that would ultimately be filled with vagina snakes, single-shot Uzis, Bronson Pinchot’s Indonesian doppleganger and the Malaysian Miley Cyrus in the first (and most apt) franchise reboot of James Cameron’s Terminator. This night was about a mostly nude lady on a rampage. First she mates, then she terminates. Either way, she’s going to steal your heart.

Because audiences demand more boobs, blood, and biting of nether regions on screen, Dimension is answering the call and riding the wave of self-proclaimed success by announcing Piranha 3D 2. Producer Mark Canton excitedly proclaimed in the press release that he couldn’t “wait to get to work on the sequel.” It’s unclear right now whether Alexandre Aja will return as director, but whoever gets the job will hopefully be a newcomer that will, according to the film’s history, become the next James Cameron.

James Cameron has never been the kind of director to jump directly back on the bandwagon. After The Terminator in 1984, he went into outer space with Aliens (1986), then under water in The Abyss (1989) before coming back to make Terminator 2 in 1991. And after he hit big with Titanic, he refused to give the world the sequel it has always needed, leaving that task to The Asylum. So it’s a bit of a surprise to see Cameron talking loosely about immersing himself in the world of Avatar so soon — to the tune of the long-gestating novelization and not one, but two sequels. Then again, none of his previous films earned $2.73 billion at the box office. All of this talk comes from several interviews that Cameron has conducted in the lead up to the theatrical re-release of Avatar scheduled for August 27th. More on that after the jump.

Guillermo Del Toro has had one of the fuller cinematic plates for a while now with several projects circling his director’s chair at any given time. He was attached to direct the Hobbit films, but MGM’s financial woes have put the temporary kibosh on the project and forced Del Toro to move on to something new. His to-do list includes reboot/remakes of Frankenstein, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, adaptations of David Moody’s Hater and Dan Simmons’ Drood, and probably even an original work or three. But his dream project for quite some time has been an adaptation of H.P Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. The tale follows an expedition to the Antarctic that discovers the remains of an other-worldly civilization of monsters, gods, and monster gods.

One hundred years is quite the milestone to celebrate. Just ask Gloria Stuart who celebrated her 100th birthday on the 234th birthday of the United States. Still, it seems like it might be a strange sort of milestone to toast to when the historical event involves thousands of people drowning to death in freezing cold waters. However, the talk about Titanic 2: The 3D Reckoning seems to be more and more serious lately, and James Cameron, a man who is notorious for only talking about projects once he’s decided to do them (within the decade) has dropped April 2012 as the month he’d like to drop the sequel to 1997′s most popular film featuring Celine Dion singing.

Much of the talk these days is around shooting in 3D vs. doing 3D conversion in post-production. One works (see: Avatar) and the other clearly does not (see: Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender). And ever since it was announced that Michael Bay’s Transformers 3 would be released in 3D, the assumption has been that it would be done in post-production. That’s not the case, says a new report.

You wouldn’t know it if you aren’t a top-ranking member of the FSR staff, but it’s been a busy week around here.

Were you interested in seeing a big screen adaptation of Aquaman someday? Well, now you can’t. Because your favorite aquatic hero is dead thanks to the BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast.

What do you do when you have a major natural disaster? You call in James Cameron. If he can’t fix it, he will remove the problem digitally with groundbreaking special effects.

Your daily recommended allowance of random movie stuff, stories that fell through the cracks, and news you can’t use.

The Alien prequel will be in 3D one way or another, but Scott seems unafraid of handling it all in post.

It appears as if it doesn’t matter whether a studio includes a great deal of special features or not. If they release a movie that people want to see, people will buy it.

James Cameron’s epic love story Titanic has aged rather interestingly, to the say the least. First, there was a great amount of love. Then there was a bit of backlash. Now, we have 20/20 hindsight and a chance to chat with producer Jon Landau.

As you may know by now, James Cameron’s Avatar hit DVD and Blu-ray shelves yesterday in a big way. In fact, it sold so many copies that we don’t know if giving a few away we be a very popular thing. So we’ve sweetened the deal a little bit…

Avatar hit the streets today on DVD and Blu-ray. And what would usually be a great day of celebration as the highest grossing film of all-time rolls onto home video formats is marred by the quality of the release. We take a dive into the release to answer some all-important questions.

When James Cameron talks about his next project, we will always be listening. There is always necessity for tempered excitement though, as Cameron is not the sort of filmmaker who moves fast from project to project…