My McConaissance has had a resurgence….Fuck

McConaughottie as Palmer Joss in Contact (1997)

Alright alright alright, I thought we were past this. He won his Oscar for Dallas Buyer’s Club (2014) where he played a skeletal cowboy suffering from AIDS opposite Jared Leto who also won, and to whom I had ALWAYS been attracted. Matthew basically stayed under my radar. He had a Southern twang that just didn’t agree with me, and I was never a fan of True Detective because I don’t fancy myself a pretentious ass who knows more about philosophy than I actually do, also I’m a girl c’mon. Last year, after the Cumberbitch fog had lifted, the McConaissance was in full swing, he not only dominated the headlines for his virtuoso film work, but for his TV work, where he basically plays that same guy we see in every tv show, and did something all actors do to get noticed…they get ugly. For Dallas Buyer’s he lost close to 45 lbs. As Tiny Fey called it ‘or what actresses call being in a movie.’ 

As the completely emaciated Rob Woodruff, a role that won him the Academy Award. Suck on that, Christian Bale.

As for True Detective he gave himself a ridiculous fu-manchu mustache, and a celebutante-inspired messy and loose ponytail. I would have said to go whole hog and grown a mullet and knocked out a couple of his front teeth, but that might have been a bit much. And through it all, every woman in America was getting to throw her panties at the tv and started to pretend she cares about The King in Yellow.

Rustin, the man, the myth, the chain smoker.

So yesterday, Sunday, the day that I don’t move at all except to extend my hand for the remote, SyFy decided to play a cruel joke on me. They decided to air back-to-back blocks of the film Contact (1997), you remember that one serious film McConaughey before he was typecast a slightly goofy stoner with endless barrels of Southern charm? He plays some kind of ‘scientist’ whose title they clearly made up for the film, because there’s no such job in astronomy…I think it’s like a spiritual analyst of extra-terrestrial phenomena...whatever. 

44 and CUUUUUT! Don't ever change, McConaughey.

Anyway, he falls in love with renegade astronomy maverick Jodie Foster who's character just won’t roll over and die damn it, which is I guess a good thing because she starts to pick up a bizarre noise on her ginormous headphones that are linked to about a football field full of giant satellites. But anyway, that’s like the plot and everything, but what’s really worth it about the film is watching a clean-shaven McConaughey play it straight as a PhD astrophysicist. I mean I’ve never seen an actor stretch so much, where else has he done anything remotely like that in his acting career or otherwise. I love how we have to buy him as smart and then just a year later he’s arrested in Texas for playing the bongos naked and stoned. Atta boy. That’s the McConaughey we all know and love. Don’t ever stop being ridiculous Matty. We’re laughing with you not at you, also I sent you massage oil a few weeks ago, did you get it? Because it doesn’t seem like you’ve been using it.