3.29.2012

Now this is a bracket we're happy to fill out

The good people at Esquire have again put together a field of 64 hot women for creepy bloggers like us to objectify and grade. And we thank them for it.

Regular Cheese Fry readers (and we know there's at least four of you) may recall Olivia Wilde winning this exercise last year and Christina Hendricks winning in 2010. So proud they must be to have the Cheese Fry in their corner.

So will win this year?

This year, the 64 women are divided by Esquire into "Movies," "TV," "Royals," and "Models and Music."

Here's how our bracket shaped up.

Emerging from "Movies" into the Sweet 16:
* Charlize Theron (1 seed)
* Kate Winslet (12)
* Felicity Jones (14)
* Emma Stone (2)
The 1 and the 2 advance as expected, no question there. The 3-seed was Jennifer Lawrence, who we feel the Selection Committee seeded much too high. Mila Kunis was 4, which seems right, but she still lost in what Esquire might consider an update to Kate Winslet, ranked at a rather absurdly low 12.

Coming out of the "TV" division into the Sweet 16:
* Sofia Vergara (1)
* Kristen Bell (4)
* Amber Heard (6)
* Maria Menounos (15)
More low seeds advance. Not making the cut: someone named Gugu Mbatha-Raw (2) and the "30 Rock" intern Katrina Bowden (3). We don't really get Kristen Bell, but she's definitely hotter than Elizabeth Olsen (14), whom she beat to get here. We saw Maria Menounos in person once and cannot adequately describe to you how incredibly beautiful she is - it's like she's been CGI'd or something.

From the "Royals" division, we get these for the Sweet 16:
* Helen Mirren (16)
* Kim Kardashian (4)
* Stacy Keibler (3)
* Beyonce (7)
Helen Mirren as a 16? Seriously? It's certainly hip to call Dame Helen attractive, but that doesn't make it any less true. In a fight against #1 seed Duchess Katherine, it's not even close. Kim and Stacy are empty vessels, really, advancing in the most perfunctory way possible. This is surely the easiest division. It's the NFC West of the brackets.

And entering the Sweet 16 from the "Models and Music" group:
* Kate Upton (1)
* Katy Perry (4)
* Brooklyn Decker (3)
* Bar Refaeli (7)
Carrie Underwood (2) missed the cut, or else it would be a favorites-only bracket. Despite how annoying the Maria Menounos anecdote may have been, we must also note that we once sat behind Bar Refaeli at a Lakers game. We didn't recognize her right away, but even with a baseball cap on and no makeup, it was clear she was, as they say, smoking hot.

The Sweet 16 shook out like this:

* Kate Winslet defeats Charlize Theron - Charlize is regal and statuesque, yes, but she wouldn't ever talk to you, but we like to think we could have a beer with Kate
* Emma Stone defeats Felicity Jones - Emma may have been the best thing about last month's Oscar show
* Sofia Vergara defats Kristen Bell - like killing a fly with a shotgun
* Amber Heard defeats Maria Menounous - Maria is the cute girl next door, but Amber is the gorgeous woman across town
* Helen Mirren defeats Kim Kardashian - we protest that Kim was even in these brackets
* Beyonce defeats Stacy Kiebler - cannon fodder for the next rounds
* Kate Upton defeats Katy Perry - we can't believe the stories we hear about how the fashion industry is so unimpressed with Kate
* Bar Rafeli defeats Brooklyn Decker - photo finish, it was so close

And here's who's going to the Final Four:
* Kate Winslet (12) beats Emma Stone (2)
* Amber Heard (6) beats Sofia Vergara (1)
* Helen Mirren (16) beats Beyonce (7)
* Kate Upton (1) beats Bar Refaeli (7)
Upsets, upsets, upsets. Kate Upton advances without breaking a sweat, but underdogs fill out the rest of the Final Four.

And the championship rounds:
* Kate Winslet beats Amber Heard
* Kate Upton beats Helen Mirren

Which means that Kate Winslet beats Kate Upton in a Battle of the Short Names for Catherine. A truly worthy victor, don't you think?

3.25.2012

Knee-jerk review: "21 Jump Street"

1. It's really, really good. Yeah, we're just as surprised as you.
2. Sure, we watched a few episodes of the Fox TV show back in the late 1980s, but we weren't what you'd call fans. We remember best the episode where Johnny Depp's girlfriend got shot dead in a convenience store and he became obsessed with the fact that he could have done more to stop it.
3. Man, there are a lot of penis jokes in this movie. And most of them are funny.
4. Brie Larson. Like, wow.
5. Jonah Hill's bumbling goofball act is wearing a little thin at this point. It's probably a good thing that he's branching out into more dramatic roles like Moneyball.
6. Korean Jesus.
7. Comedies don't get much respect at all from the cineaste film snobs out there, but this script is smart, tight, and well-executed in such a way that it would still work if you took out all of the jokes. What could have been a lame, lazy, cash-in project was taken seriously by everyone involved.
8. We finally understand what the fuss is all about regarding Channing Tatum. He's solid.
9. Yes, you do hear the theme song.
10. And yes, Johnny Depp makes a cameo. We'd heard about that in advance. But we were surprised to see Holly Robinson (Peete) and Peter DeLuise. Why didn't Dustin Nguyen make it?
11. The easy thing would be to send the nerd back to high school to relive his nerd past and the jock to relive his jock past. The genius here is that it's flipped: the nerd goes back and experiences popularity, while the jock goes back and experiences social ostracism.
12. We'd probably watch Ice Cube do anything. He has charisma to burn. This Coors Light commercial was one of our favorites from last fall. "Did you just snow on me?"


3.20.2012

Don't Worry, Do Brackets

The Cheese Fry isn't a big NCAA fan. Considering the time we waste on NFL and NBA games, it's probably a good thing we're immune to March Madness. But we can always appreciate the absurdity of a good pop-culture alternative bracket, like one that something called Mix107.7 created. It pits 1980s one-hit wonders against one another.

Here's how our brackets worked out.

The Sweet 16
"Catch Me I'm Falling" (Pretty Poison - you surely know it's from the Jon Cryer movie Hiding Out)
"Maniac" (Michael Sembello - whatever happened to him? who was he?)
"Cars" (Gary Numan)
"Relax" (Frankie Goes to Hollywood - which we actually quite hate)
"Puttin' on the Ritz" (Taco)
"Toy Soldiers" (Martika - sublime pop classic)
"99 Luft Balloons" (Nena)
"I Melt with You" (Modern English)
"Der Kommissar" (After the Fire - chh-chh ch-ch-chh ch-ch-chh)
"Heart and Soul" (T'Pau)
"In a Big Country" (Big Country - it's the name of our band and our hit song)
"Break My Stride" (Matthew Wilder - a roller rink standard at North Dallas' Starlight rink circa 1982)
"Funkytown" (Lipps, Inc. - another roller rink standard)
"Under the Milky Way" (The Church)
"Somebody's Watching Me" (Rockwell)
"Buffalo Stance" (Neneh Cherry)

The only number 1 seed to advance the the field of 16? "I Melt with You" The other three #1s fall early in shocking upsets - "867-5309," "Come On Eileen," and "Tainted Love."

Likewise, "Relax" is the only number 2 seed, advancing where other, seemingly stronger 2s ("Mickey," "I Want Candy," and "Too Shy") cannot.

The threes fare a little better - "Cars" and "In a Big Country" make it to the Sweet 16 while the insufferable "Whip It" and "She Blinded Me with Science" rightly fall.

So it's a bracket full of late-80s FM radio Cinderellas that get to the championship rounds.

The Final Four
"Toy Soldiers" (11) beats "Catch Me I'm Falling" (8)
"Buffalo Stance" (9) beats "Heart and Soul" (12)

And in the championship match:
"Buffalo Stance" (9) beats "Toy Soldiers" (11)

Vindication: "Buffalo Stance" is indeed one of our most favorite songs from the 1980s, though it came out late 1989 and almost counts as a 90s song.

That's one way to waste 20 minutes.