Saturday, November 9, 2013

Two Tickets For… Ranks… The Marvel Cinematic Universe Films (Not Called The Avengers)


Andrew: Hello readers! What did we say in our last post, eh? Definitely our busy season, but with Thor: The Dark World -  the latest entry of Phase 2 in the Marvel Cinematic Universe - hitting theatres this weekend, we wanted to take the time (even if ever so quick) to give you our obligatory personal rankings of the MCU films.

Now, for the purpose of this exercise, when we say the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" films we mean that in the way Marvel Studios does, i.e. no X-Men films, no Spider-Man films, etc. This leaves us with Phases 1 and 2 of the MCU films, and we're going to trim it down by one right off the top by taking The Avengers out of the equation. Why? Because it would be at the top of both our lists, duh. That leaves us with six films to rank, so without further ado please enjoy the very first entry of our new feature, Two Tickets For... Ranks...


Sarah: Personally I'm glad we're sticking to the Phase 1 and Phase 2 films in the MCU because I'm not a fan of the Spider-Man movies or the Fantastic Four movies, so I can guarantee you they wouldn't be on my list anyway. But like you said Andrew, here's how I personally rank the Marvel Cinematic Universe films if we're leaving The Avengers out of it, from least favorite to most favorite.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Slowing Things Down a Bit: A Two Tickets For… Update

Andrew: Hello dear readers! We know we have been VERY bad at doing the whole movie reviewing/blogging thing the last month or so, and for that we apologize. 

Since we posted our last review we actually haven't been to the theatre very much, for a number of reasons. The primary reason though, and the reason behind this particular post, is that we just haven't had the time to do so. We don't want it to sound like an excuse, either. It's just the God's honest truth.

As you may or may not know, I work for a very large sports entertainment television network, and as of late I've been particularly busy preparing for the upcoming college basketball season. Now, I've worked college basketball the last two seasons as well and still had time to do the site on a pretty regular basis, but I'm proud to say that it's not just that I don't have the time to properly review and blog, but that both Sarah and I don't quite have the same amount of time that we used to.

See, when we first moved out here to Connecticut, Sarah was hard-pressed to find a full-time job. She started off working for a local catering company on a part-time basis, which gave her a very flexible schedule and plenty of time at home so that she and I could both write emails back and forth writing our weekly previews, writing Six Packs Of… and What Two Tickets For… Would Do columns, and even the occasional review the old fashioned way.

When Sarah took a different job with a retail company, it was still on a part-time basis which gave her that flexible schedule that worked so well with mine so that we could still see movies at night and do reviews, then one of us would transcribe said review and post it. 

But in a very good occurrence of events Sarah wound up moving to a brand new store her company had opened and with it came a full-time promotion, with the slight draw-back of working later hours, which cut into our availability to see and review movies. (She'd regularly get home between 10:00pm and 10:30pm.) 

Again, this wasn't a bad thing. In fact it's a very good thing because she acquired more responsibilities at work and made new friends while making more money, too. That move - coupled with my working long hours in the summer on the NBA Draft and Little League World Series (which took me to Pennsylvania for a two-week stretch) - created a slower blogging work-flow for us. We just weren't getting the same opportunities to see films like we used to, and when we did see movies on the weekends it was when we were squeezing them into small windows of free time.

So that's the primary reason that we've been so quiet lately. It's not because we don't want to keep running this blog; because we do. We love this blog, we love the movie review blogging community, and we love talking about movies in general. So we apologize that this perfect storm of our two jobs and other social activities (such as a vacation we just came back from) have taken a short-term priority over our blogging duties.

All of that said, I'm here to say that it's still going to be slow-going for a little while longer. Sarah did just recently moved back to her original store to be the second-in-command which is even more fantastic for a number of reasons - one of which is that she will now be working more 9-to-5 shifts than she used to be, which will hopefully allow us to see more movies once again! But I'm still currently knee-deep in basketball preparations and it's going to be pretty hairy for both of us these next two months what with the start of the basketball season and with the Christmas shopping season hitting for Sarah.

Still, we're not giving up on this blog. We don't do it for money, we do it because we love talking film. I'm just here to say that while it may be sporadic, we will definitely be posting more often these next couple of months than we have been. We can't promise regular reviews or columns, but we're going to try because we'll hopefully have more time to write now. We're particularly excited for "Oscar" movies to start hitting theatres, plus we're particularly excited for Marvel's Thor: The Dark World to come out this Friday. Mayhaps we'll even write a column breaking down our favorite Marvel films in preparation for it.

So thank you, readers, for sticking with us during these slow times. We'll make it up to you if you just keep checking in with us.

P.S. Nikki, if you're reading this, eventually we'll see Captain Phillips and post a review of it. And maybe we'll even do a video review of Butter. If you're lucky. ;)