The Current Discussion: All four Oscars for best acting went to non-Americans. Is Hollywood's cultural hegemony finally breaking up? Or are we Hollywoodizing foreign talents like Javier Bardem and Marion Cotillard?

While it’s true that the four actors who won Oscars on Sunday are all non-Americans, all but one of the films in which they worked were produced in Hollywood. The American cinema machine is alive and well. What was interesting in this year’s Oscars was the much-needed comeback of grown-up movies. Cinema is the most powerful of all media, even more so than television, which lacks the former’s reach and enduring emotional impact. That’s why it was satisfying to see Hollywood reward the serious and relevant work of men like the Coen brothers, Tony Gilroy and Paul Thomas Anderson. All their movies did what cinema does when it becomes art: they held a mirror in front of a turbulent and violent world.

It’s a good year for movies when the audience gets to see and reflect on characters like Anton Chigurh and Daniel Plainview, both symbolic of the world we now live in. And it’s certainly a great year for Hollywood when Cormac McCarthy, the most grown-up of all grown-up American novelists, sits smack in the middle of the second row at the Oscars.