Lawbreakers, Unite: After NYFCC Awards, Is Matthew McConaughey An Oscar Contender?

All right, all right, all right.

Awards season has officially gotten down in the dirt with a little bit of glorious stank. The New York Film Critics Circle, an august body despite three years of madness under Armond White's leadership, has named Matthew McConaughey the year's best supporting actor for his work in both Magic Mike and Bernie.

With this double-gun recognition, my guess is that the group felt this was a salute to McConaughey's leading performance in Killer Joe, and all the forced fried chicken-sucking it included, too.

It's quite a comeback. For years McConaughey served merely two purposes: appearing in dreadful rom coms like Failure to Launch and having a last name that drove copyeditors crazy. But we knew – we knew that beneath the skin of that shirtless Texan beat the heart of a courageous and unpredictable performer who could, when given a chance, deliver. I don't know a single person who hasn't been itching for an excuse to love this guy again.

McConaughey's turn as Dallas, the “Den Father,” I guess you could call him, of the strippers in Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike, is now a genuine contender for the Golden Globes and the Oscars. (No diss to Bernie, but Magic Mike was a bonafide box office hit, has Warner Bros. behind it and, you know, ass chaps.) Plus he's already gotten a nomination for it and Killer Joe at the Spirit Awards in the bag. Our suggestion to M-McC: just keep livin'. The rest of the world is now hip to how awesome you can be.

Of course, not everyone can recognize greatness when they see it. A sampling on Twitter shows jubilant critics (someone pass CinemaBlend's Katey Rich some smelling salts) but more than one wiesenheimer suggests that a McConaughey win for his acting prowess is actually part of the Mayan's countdown to extinction.

What do you make of the McConaughey NYFCC win? Will he gyrate his way into the Oscar race now?

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