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?

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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.

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Smoking hot brackets

To try and balance out the bleary-eyed, pimply-faced geekiness of the Sci-Fi Bracket post below, we took the time to fill out Esquire magazine's Sexiest Woman Alive Madness. Real men may not be able to understand the difference between The Empire Strikes Back bounty hunters Bossk and IG-88, but they know a hot girl when they see one.

* Fashion bracket

Our age is showing. As attractive as these supermodels may be, A) we haven't heard of half of them and B) when we try to get an idea of what they look like (thank you, Google image search), we find that they mostly all look alike. This wouldn't have been the case 12 years ago when all top supermodels would have filled the pages of our monthly Maxim magazine.

#1-seed Brooklyn Decker (her, we know) defeats #2-seed Miranda Kerr to advance to the Final Four.

* Music and Sports bracket

We would argue there's many more candidates from the world of music, but Esquire may be trying to balance music with sports. Not as many, ahem, candidates from the world of sports, it seems; the ones they find are mostly women we never heard of.

#14-seed Gwyneth Paltrow (music? really?) defeats #4-seed Erin Andrews (though we still prefer the smart-girl looks of Rachel Nichols or Bonnie Bernstein) to advance to the Final Four.

We stipulate that Gwyneth in the movies can be an icy, cold experience. But the Gwyneth who's suddenly found new juice on Fox's "Glee" and become a minor singing star has real oomph.

* Movies bracket

This one's in our wheelhouse, people. We know almost all of these actresses, but lament the absence of Cheese Fry guilty-pleasure Jennifer Aniston.

#2-seed Olivia Wilde defeats #1-seed Mila Kunis (who almost lost to #4-seed Ashley Greene, FYI; you got lucky, Kunis)

* Television bracket

We must protest the inclusion of #2-seed Kim Kardashian. We, in fact, protest everything about Kim Kardashian. And yes, she did advance a round in our bracket.

#8-seed "those girls from Glee" (and Esquire isn't even including actresses Naya Rivera and Heather Morris) defeats #3-seed Christina Hendricks (last year's big winner)

* Final Four results

Olivia Wilde defeats Brooklyn Decker (see Tron Legacy and you'll know why)

"Those girls from Glee" defeat Gwyneth Paltrow

* The championship game

Olivia Wilde defeats "Those girls from Glee" and spares us the indiginity of having to defend our inexplicable interest in a Fox show about a high school choir.

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May the brackets be with you

We are many things here at the spacious, shag-carpeted Cheese Fry offices, but college basketball fans is not one of them. Thankfully, geek website io9 kindly created a March Madness bracket consisting solely of sci-fi movies.

How'd the movies fare? Glad you asked.

From the northwest bracket (the io9 brackets aren't labeled, but it sounds cooler to name them, don't you think?), #1-seed Star Wars advanced without breaking a sweat, while #3-seed Terminator 2 had no trouble beating #2-seed Day the Earth Stood Still and #7-seed District 9.

There were likewise no shocks in the southwest bracket as #1-seed 2001: A Space Odyssey and #2-seed The Empire Strikes Back advanced. It was a real nail-biter however, as #13-seed Independence Day almost edged 2001. It's become hip to trash Independence Day, but it's hard to find another world-wide disaster movie that puts as much effort (or tries to, at least) into special-effects as it does its characters. And while we do stipulate that the beginning and end of 2001 are pretty out-there, the middle section with HAL is gold.

Big upsets in the northeast bracket as underdogs stampeded over the favorites. #12-seed Total Recall ("Consider it a divorce") blows past #4-seed Back to the Future and #1-seed E.T., while #10-seed Sunshine (yes, we know the ending is absolutely terrible) beats #2-seed Wall-E.

And in the southeast bracket, things proceed as the selection committee surely intended, as #1-seed Blade Runner and #2-seed Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan advance to the Elite Eight.

And here's what happened next in the Elite Eight round... (By the way, how nerdy is this entire exercise? Good grief.)

#3 Terminator 2 defeats #1 Star Wars (we all have fond feelings about Star Wars, but it's about 20 minutes too long - search your feelings, you know it to be true)

#2 Empire Strikes Back defeats #1 2001: A Space Odyssey (2001's ending finally catches up to it)

#12 Total Recall defeats #10 Sunshine (Sunshine's ending finally catches up to it)

#1 Blade Runner defeats #2 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (we love Khan, but Blade Runner's look shaped the entire genre - there's sci-fi before Blade Runner and sci-fi after Blade Runner)

And in the Final Four round...

#2 Empire Strikes Back defeats #3 Terminator 2 (bubble gum beats dark-and-grim)

#1 Blade Runner defeats #12 Total Recall (visual style beat narrative pretzels)

And in the championship...

#2 Empire Strikes Back defeats #1 Blade Runner

This feels right, don't you think? And not just because we have a toy Tauntaun sitting on our bookshelf.

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Brackets of women

Last month, Esquire magazine kindly put together a 64-team bracket for its readers' pleasure. Instead of college basketball teams, however, this bracket was comprised of "Sexiest Women" in four "regions": Music/Fashion, Sports, Movies, and Television.

We may not be college basketball fans here at the Cheese Fry, but the same cannot be said of "sexiest women." An interesting exercise. If you're forced to choose between only two things, the choice can sometimes be rather surprising. Also interesting: many of the names Esquire put into the running are women we'd never heard of.

The results:

Sweet Sixteen

* Music/Fashion
Beyonce def. Gisele Bunchen
Brooklyn Decker def. Carrie Underwood

* Sports
Serena Williams def. Erin Andrews
Anna Kournikova def. Daniela Hantuchova, whoever she is

* Movies
Rachel McAdams def. Jennifer Aniston
Eva Longoria def. Paula Patton

* Television
Christina Hendricks def. Minka Kelly
Olivia Munn def. Ginnifer Goodwin

Elite Eight

* Music/Fashion
Beyonce def. Brooklyn Decker

* Sports
Serena Williams def. Anna Kournikova

* Movies
Eva Longoria def. Rachel McAdams

* Television
Christina Hendricks def. Olivia Munn

Final Four

Eva Longoria def. Beyonce
Christina Hendricks def. Serena Williams

Title Match

Christina Hendricks def. Eva Longoria

What does this tell us? That the Cheese Fry should be enjoying a lucrative job working as an editor at Esquire. One month after conducting this pointless exercise, Esquire named Christina Hendricks sexiest woman alive. We've already mailed them an invoice for our consulting services.

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