Last week, we began the run-up to the Oscar telecast (less than two weeks away now!) with the first of three Thursday Poll columns, this one asking for your predictions for Best Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress. And in what I do believe would qualify as a shocker of gargantuan proportions, the Screengrab readers defied conventional wisdom and predicted Michael Shannon as the most likely winner of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, narrowly beating out the odds-on favorite, Heath Ledger.

Just kidding, folks! But that sure got your attention, didn’t it? Seriously though, Ledger dominated the supporting actor poll with a mighty 72% of the vote. Doubt possible pedophile priest Philip Seymour Hoffman came in second with 11%, and the other nominees evenly split the remaining votes, with 6% apiece. I suppose that means if Ledger does indeed get overlooked for the Oscar, it’s gonna be a pretty big upset- which we pretty much already knew.

In the somewhat more competitive category of Best Supporting Actress, the favorite according to the Screengrab readership was Doubt’s Viola Davis, besting Vicky Cristina Barcelona scene-stealer Penelope Cruz by a margin of 50% to 36%. Of the remaining votes, 6% each went to Amy Adams and Marisa Tomei, with Benjamin Button’s Taraji P. Henson not receiving a single vote.

This week, we move on to the lead acting categories. In the Best Actor race, most Oscar pundits are predicting either Milk star Sean Penn or Wrestler leading man Mickey Rourke for the win. But will voters fall harder for Penn, an Academy favorite whose spirited and sunny performance in a true-life role is miles from his usual intense roles, or Rourke, who’s got the year’s highest-profile comeback-kid story in his corner? Or will there be an upset by Screengrab fan favorite Richard Jenkins, the CGI-assisted Brad Pitt, or Frank Langella, who’s my kind of fella? The choice is yours:



Likewise, in Best Actress, most of the people “in the know” are calling this a race between Meryl Streep, who’s hungering for that third Oscar (it’s been 26 years, after all), and Kate Winslet, whose much-overdue first Oscar win would only be problematic in the sense that it would be for frickin’ The Reader. But as William Goldman famously put it, nobody knows anything, and for all we know the voters might have converged behind Melissa Leo, Angelina Jolie, and (should good taste rule the day) Anne Hathaway instead. So who do you think will take home the golden boy?



As always, the comments section is open. See you next week!