Because of the shutting down of Buzzdash, the site we normally used to host our Thursday Polls, we were unable to post the results of the poll that ran in this space two weeks ago. But if we had, we could have told you that our most recent poll commemorated the start of the Major League Baseball season, and depending on who you root for, you’re either feeling the excitement of a potentially awesome year or a certain degree of disappointment in seeing your favorite team consistently losing once the games actually count (of course, the Indians usually start slow, right? RIGHT???). But no matter how your real-life baseball team is faring right now, you can always count on a good baseball movie.

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Due to some unforeseen computer issues last week, I was unable to post the results of the recent Paul Rudd-themed poll. However, it looks like mine weren’t the only computer troubles to strike of late, considering that when I went to check out the results of that poll, it had been replaced by one that asks the question, “Is it possible to view a situation with 100% objectivity?”- a question that remains relevant in the greater scheme but is hardly the sort of issue Screengrab normally address.

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Charlie Kaufman is one of the most gifted and distinctive screenwriters in the movie business, and with the recent release of his directorial debut Synecdoche, New York on DVD, I decided to take a look back at his career to date, particularly his original screenplays. Each original Kaufman film has its share of ardent admirers, but according to the Screengrab readership, none is better than his mindbending relationship story, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Sunshine brought Kaufman his only Oscar to date, and clearly the voters agreed with the movie’s awesomeness, having given it a full 50% of the vote against some pretty heavy competition.

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Despite what some box office analysts may tell you, a $55 million opening weekend in early March for an R-rated comic book adaptation is nothing to sneeze at. And while it appears that there was plenty of curiosity by the moviegoing public about the Watchmen movie, it seems that many of Screengrab’s readers didn’t share this enthusiasm. Consider that nearly half the voters in last week’s poll- 43%, to be precise- responded that they “couldn’t care less” about Watchmen.

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I realize you’re probably Oscar-ed out by now, and believe me, I understand completely. Yet some of you had enough residual Oscar-season love to bestow on the more obvious changes to this year’s telecast. Of all the new wrinkles to the ages-old format, your favorite this year was the family-unfriendly but undeniably hilarious montage of comedies featuring James Franco and Seth Rogen. This bit was chosen by 54% of you, and I’ve got to say that I was a fan of it as well, giggling about certain gags days afterwards. I mean, what’s not to love about Franco staple-gunning a dollar bill to Rogen’s face Necrobutcher-style, the pair cutting up at The Reader, or the random inclusion of Janusz Kaminski in the action? As a friend of mine said, if Werner Herzog ever gets a late-night talk show- and he really should- Janusz Kaminski needs to be his right-hand guy. Amen, bud.

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So how about those Oscars, folks? If you’re like me- and if you are indeed like me, then sorry about the pale complexion and crippling inferiority complex- you were let down by the massive amounts of love thrown at Slumdog Millionaire by the Academy rank-and-file. I mean, Best Sound- really? Over the likes of WALL*E, which was largely dependent on its sound to tell the story? In the Academy’s defense, I too might be inclined to love A.R. Rahman’s Slumdog score if I’d never seen a Bollywood movie. But anyway…

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In the second week of our three-week run-up to the Academy Awards- only three more days!- we surveyed you on your predictions in the lead acting categories. In the hotly-contested Best Actor race, most have predicted a close call between old friends Sean Penn (Milk) and Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler). And you folks predicted them as the front-runners as well, with Rourke finally outpacing Penn, 50% to 30%.

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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.

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Last week, in response to the fairly bland and uninspired crop of Best Picture nominees this year, we asked our readers how many of them they actually enjoyed. And much like me, you folks were mostly negative on the movies that the Academy deemed the cream of this year’s crop. 76% of you said that you only liked two or fewer of the five nominees, with half those people liking one or even zero.

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With Oscar nominations, there of course comes the second-guessing. While many of our favorites made the cut this year, it seems like just as many got the shaft. But which was most egregiously snubbed? In a shocking turn of events, the Best Picture omission of fanboy favorite The Dark Knight was narrowly edged out by Academy voters’ lack of love for Happy-Go-Lucky’s persistently positive Poppy, Sally Hawkins.

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Long an industry favorite, Clint Eastwood’s films has been nominated for Best Picture four times to date. But which of his nominated films has held up the best? In the eyes of our readers, his first Best Picture nominee (and winner), Unforgiven, still reigns. Bringing in a decisive 72% of the vote, Unforgiven trounced the competition. In fact, our readers preferred Eastwood’s orangutan comedies to any of his other nominated films...

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With the Oscar ceremony little more than a month away and nominations being announced next week, I used last week’s Thursday Poll to ask you about your tastes in Oscar hosts. And you responded rather decisively that when it comes to recent Oscar emcees, your preference was for Jon Stewart, erstwhile host of The Daily Show and star of such cinematic gems as Death to Smoochy, Big Daddy and Playing By Heart, who brought in 57% of the votes.

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Last week, the Screengrab writing staff published their choices for the best movies of 2008. In conjunction, we asked you folks to vote for your favorite from our five consensus choices. And winner is…

(fiddles with envelope for an absurdly drawn-out length of time)…

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The celebration of some obscure holiday caught me completely off guard a week ago, and so shocked was I by its sudden emergence that I completely forgot to run a Thursday poll. Because of this, I neglected to report that fully half of our readers, when given the choice between Kate Winslet’s Oscar-nominated performances, preferred her turn as the mood-haired Clementine in Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

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Last week, to coincide with the release of Ron Howard’s big-screen take on Frost/Nixon, we asked you to choose your favorite big-screen version of our 37th President. According to you, the Trickiest Dick of all was the future Lt. Bookman and Jimmy Gator himself, Philip Baker Hall, in Robert Altman’s Secret Honor. Hall brought in 45% of the vote, all the more impressive when you consider that his competition was somewhat stiffer than Nixon’s was in 1972.

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Last week, the Thursday Poll took a look back at the recent films of Gus Van Sant to commemorate with the release of his latest film, Milk. In the process we made one unmistakable discovery- you folks like your Van Sant movie arty. To wit: of Van Sant’s last five movies, your favorite (and mine too) was 2002’s minimalist slackers-in-the-desert saga Gerry, which simultaneously won the week and conquered Thebes with a 44% showing.

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Last week, we continued our Bond-fest with the eternal question, “who was the best 007?” But much like the Vesper martinis that Daniel Craig’s Bond enjoys so much, this quiz came with a twist- Sean Connery wasn’t one of the candidates, a choice we made with the goal of keeping the poll competitive. However, you had other plans, with Craig (if nothing else, the first Bond since Connery who could convincingly kick some serious villain ass) bringing home a cool 56% of the vote. Trailing him by a wide margin was the #2 choice, Roger Moore, with 19%, followed by Pierce Brosnan with 13%.

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With the U.S. release of Quantum of Solace last weekend, Bond-mania was in full swing, and for last week’s poll we couldn’t help but play along. We asked you to select your favorite from the Screengrab list of the Top 5 Bond Movies, and the favorite of our readers was the third 007 adventure, 1964’s Goldfinger. Taking in 38% of the vote, the Connery classic outpaced the competition...

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With a little more than two months left until Oscar nominations are announced, who stands the best chance of being nominated from the movies that have already gotten released? If the predictions of Screengrab’s readership hold any water (and we like to think they do), then Anne Hathaway should be very happy come nomination day. Once best known as the star of the Princess Diaries franchise (and later as the girl who gets topless in the otherwise regrettable Havoc), Hathaway’s revelatory lead performance in Jonathan Demme’s near-masterpiece Rachel Getting Married has made a real impression on our readers, nearly half of whom voted for it in last week’s poll.

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This year’s Presidential election might have resulted in a decisive win, but not all elections lately have been so clear-cut. Take last week’s poll, in which we polled you folks about your favorite of our top 5 horror movies of all time. With nearly all precincts reporting, it’s a dead heat between the top contenders, Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. Making this deadlock all the more surprising is the fact that, just a few weeks ago, these first two installments in George A. Romero’s Dead franchise didn’t finish nearly so closely in that particular poll. At any rate, it’s looking like we’re going to have to send this one to the House of Representatives, who ought to be able to settle this thing, although the possibility of a corrupt bargain is a very real one.

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And It’s George W. Bush by a landslide! Inspired by the recent release of W., we asked our readers to compare the onscreen presidency of Josh Brolin with his father’s performance as Ronald Reagan on the controversial miniseries The Reagans. In the end, it wasn’t even close, with every single vote going the younger Brolin’s way. Of course, there were only a handful of votes registered by our state-of-the-art polling instruments, which either means that only a few of you have seen either or both of the films, or there was some massive voter disenfranchisement going on. Of course, neither would possibly stand a chance against Terry Crews' spot-on portrayal of President Camacho, but that's a poll for another time.

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With so many superhero movies set to come out this summer, one of them is bound to suck.  Well, that's not true -- chances are pretty good that all of them are going to suck.  But the folks over at New York magazine are ever the optimists, and they're handicapping the cape-and-cowl movies of the hot months to determine which one to avoid.

They peg Iron Man as most likely to succeed (despite the fact that ol' Shell-Head "has nowhere near the Q-meter rating of Spidey or Supes", but The Incredible Hulk is their even-money choice to bomb out: "The initial trailer made the movie seem exciting but shallow and somewhat humorless.  And if a legitimately great director like Ang Lee can't make the Hulk story into a good movie, what chance does Louis Leterrier (previous credits:  The Transporter, The Transporter 2) have?"

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