Cinema

Joan Roca was the master behind the special menu that the Elton John AIDS Foundation served during its traditional charitable Oscars viewing gala. Nearly one thousand guests enjoyed the creations of El Celler de Can Roca, which combined some of their traditional family dishes and others incorporating local California produce. “This is an opportunity to showcase our work at the restaurant, but also to shine the spotlight on Spanish cuisine,” said Joan Roca. The involvement of BBVA's brand ambassadors in one of the year’s top events in Los Angeles was possible thanks to the partnership between BBVA Compass, the U.S. franchise of the Spanish bank, and the Elton John Foundation.

Some of the brightest stars from the worlds of entertainment, sports and more came together last night to raise funds for the Elton John Aids Foundation (EJAF) at the nonprofit’s annual Oscars watch party and dinner in West Hollywood.

Now in its 26th year, the Academy Awards Viewing Party was hosted by Sir Elton John and David Furnish. As one of the co-sponsors, BBVA Compass was honored to bring its brand ambassadors, the Roca Brothers of the Michelin three-star restaurant El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain, to design and prepare dinner for the event’s more than 900 guests, all in support of EJAF’s important fundraising initiatives addressing the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the United States, Canada and Latin America.

On Sunday March 4, the global capital of the film industry will once again don formal dress to announce its highest honors. During the ceremony, celebrities will attend a number of parties but without a doubt, one of the most popular and long-awaited will be the charity dinner hosted by Elton John each year to collect funds for his foundation. This year, the Roca brothers, the celebrated restaurateurs of Girona, will be in charge of the preparing a special menu for the occasion - a menu not just for the stars, but for a good cause.

The Italian director Ettore Scola once said that movies are a painted mirror. Dramas, comedies and adventures of all kinds have been presented on the big screen for decades. But the imagination of film directors when creating science fiction has taken them even further, to a once-distant future that we’ve finally reached. Many screenplays were written about the present we now live in, but how accurate were their predictions?

Christmas and New Year’s are coming and with them, new resolutions and new dreams.  BBVA wants to celebrate these holidays by recalling that opportunities are within everyone’s reach, in line with the company’s corporate purpose: “To bring the age of opportunity to everyone. "

For a while after science-fiction was first coined as a term, it seemed like the only thing the genre would be capable of producing would be just that: purely fictional works with no connection to reality. Today, we can already enjoy some of the futuristic innovations featured in some movies a while back, such as virtual reality or artificial intelligence. Which sci-fi movies predicted the future digital era and got it right?

The tenth month of the year is the most 'summertumn’ of all. Check iWeather on a smartphone to see if it’s too cold to wakeboard. Use a laptop to find the best less-mainstream brunch spot in the Malasaña neighborhood. Having a hard time understanding? Maybe some millennial tips are needed to learn the slang.

Actors Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks recently hosted The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles' (SCLA) 27th Annual Simply Shakespeare benefit on Sept. 18, where BBVA Compass gave its inaugural Bright Futures Award to an army veteran who is bringing opportunities to those in need.

The television and film industries are using big data to make sure that their shows and movies are a hit with audiences and, more importantly, to prevent million-dollar losses from poor decisions.

El Bosco. El jardín de los sueños (Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights) will premier in Mexican theaters this weekend. Directed by José Luis López Linares and sponsored by the BBVA Foundation, the documentary will also be released in the U.S. on September 24th.

For almost a decade, the BBVA Bancomer Foundation has been supporting the filmmaking vision, dreams and talent of young university students through its Hazlo en Cortometraje (Do it in a Short Film) contest. This year’s contest, with over 1,113 submissions, has been a success. The works are produced by Mexican students - the contest only recently opened to participants from other countries – and focus on topics that basically aim to drive a change in attitude among society with respect to different issues.

The Turkish Way, the second movie by the Roca brothers and BBVA, will be premiered on Monday 19 September at the 6th edition of the culinary section of the San Sebastian Film Festival. This second installment  follows Joan, Josep and Jordi Roca during their trip to Turkey before the 2015 BBVA Tour, which over a period of 5 weeks visited several countries to pay tribute to their cuisine. The owners of El Celler de Can Roca discovered the history and gastronomic potential of Turkey through young chefs, sommeliers and local producers.    

Summer is finally here! While many of us may picture ourselves jetting off to a tropical island to do nothing but enjoy cocktails while bathing in a secluded beach…  the truth is that, unfortunately, due to a lack of money and time, some of us will have to save our dreams for later and spend the summer in the city. But, hey, it’s ok! There are thousands plans waiting for you - low-cost, even for free - and you probably didn’t know anything about them.

They say that reality is stranger than fiction and there is no doubt that the world economic situation since 2007 has exceeded what any of us could have imagined. Is there any better way to understand this than with the help of a few good movies about finance? Their number has multiplied over the last few years and some of them have made the shortlist for the Oscars. These are our six recommendations:

Tablets, mobiles, the cloud….all the technologies we assiduously use today have improved our lives enormously. So much so, that some people are starting to question whether this is affecting our mental abilities, as we now rely on our devices to take care of things that 20 years ago depended exclusively on our brain power.

Now we know something more about Garbiñe Muguruza’s tennis, after seeing fight all the way to the end against the world’s number 1, Serena Williams, in the Wimbledon 2015 final.

Crowdfunding has penetrated deep within the cinema industry. It is almost impossible to conceive of a film festival these days that does not feature at least one movie financed using the system, which has even triumphed at Hollywood's Academy Awards. However, from its origins in altruistic support and remuneration in kind, we have seen a gradual shift toward equity crowdfunding.

Digital entrepreneurship and innovation are as present in our lives as cinema and television. Biopics about famous people, which in years past depicted politicians, sportspeople, journalists..., today deal with CEOs, entrepreneurs and innovators in the digital age. The entertainment industry is keeping up with new technologies and this list of movies and tv shows can prove that everybody can get inspiration having a good time when talking about entrepreneurship.