Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 2013

The Contenders:

12 Years a Slave (winner)
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Philomena
The Wolf of Wall Street

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 2013

The Contenders:

American Hustle
Blue Jasmine
Dallas Buyers Club
Her (winner)
Nebraska

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 2013

The Contenders:

Chiwetel Ejiofor: 12 Years a Slave
Christian Bale: American Hustle
Matthew McConaughey: Dallas Buyers Club (winner)
Bruce Dern: Nebraska
Leonardo DiCaprio: The Wolf of Wall Street

Aid for AIDS

Film: Dallas Buyers Club
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

So let’s get one thing straight right off the start: I am not a major believer in Matthew McConaughey. I feel about him about the same way I do Clive Owen or Colin Farrell. I’m suspicious of anything he’s in until I have a good reason not to be. So when McConaughey won the Best Actor Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club, I had hopes that I might like him in this, but I didn’t know for sure.

This is the allegedly true story of Ron Woodroof (McConaughey), who was diagnosed with HIV and eventually AIDS in the mid-1980s, back when the disease was still considered both a gay disease and was almost completely misunderstood. Woodroof is given 30 days to live by Dr. Sevard (Dennis O’Hare) and Dr. Saks (Jennifer Garner). Convinced at first that he has been misdiagnosed, Ron eventually comes to understand that his condition almost certainly came through unprotected sex with an intravenous drug using prostitute. Determined to outlive his 30 day death sentence, Ron learns of experimental trials of AIDS drug AZT and bribes a hospital worker to give him the real drugs.