Taken

Taken may refer to:

Film and television

Literature

Music

Up All Night (One Direction album)

Up All Night is the debut studio album by English-Irish group One Direction, released by Syco Records in November 2011 in Ireland and the United Kingdom, followed by a worldwide release during 2012. Four months after finishing third in the seventh series of British reality singing contest The X Factor in December 2010, One Direction began recording the album in Sweden, UK and the United States, working with a variety of writers and producers. The album is predominantly a pop music album which orientates into pop rock, dance-pop, teen pop and power pop. The album's lyrical content regards being young, relationships, heartbreak and empowerment. Staged in support of the album, One Direction performed the album's songs live on televised shows, at awards ceremonies, and during their worldwide Up All Night Tour.

The album received generally favourable reviews from contemporary music critics, many of whom appreciated the album's combination of melodic song craft and catchy, pop-oriented material that, while slickly produced, avoided the commercial cynicism and adult contemporary posturing of some of their '80s and '90s forebears. An international success, the album topped the charts in sixteen countries and, by December 2012, has sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The album bowed at number two on the UK Albums Chart and ultimately became the UK's fastest-selling debut album of 2011. Up All Night debuted to number one on the United States Billboard 200, selling 176,000 copies in its first week. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), Up All Night was the third global best-selling album of 2012 with sales of 4.5 million copies.

Taken (film series)

The Taken film series is a series of English-language French action films beginning with Taken in 2008. All three films feature Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills.

Films

Taken (2008)

A retired CIA operative named Bryan Mills crosses the globe to rescue his 17-year-old daughter after she is kidnapped by human traffickers and sold into sexual slavery while traveling in France.

Taken 2 (2012)

Murad, the mob boss of the gang of human traffickers and father of Marko, whom Bryan had killed by electrocution, plans to capture Bryan, who is vacationing with his family in Turkey, and avenge his son's death.

Taken 3 (2015)

Bryan has been framed for the murder of his ex-wife, Lenore. He then sets out to clear his name by going after the real killers, while also eluding capture from U.S. authorities that he formerly worked for.

TV series

In September 2015, NBC ordered a prequel based on the series depicting a young Bryan Mills.

Characters and cast

Crew and other

Reception

Box office performance

Critical and public response

Kudos

Kudos (from the Ancient Greek: κῦδος) is acclaim or praise for exceptional achievement.

Kudos may refer to:

See also

Kudos (video game)

Kudos is a video game developed by British-based Positech Games (the makers of Democracy). Its gameplay is very similar to games like The Sims. The game spawned a sequel, called Kudos: Rock Legend. In October 2008, a sequel to the game Kudos 2 was released, featuring much improved character art by comic artist Jamie McKelvie.

Gameplay

The basic principle of Kudos is that the player controls a 'virtual life' for ten years, starting at age 20, and ending at age 30. An accelerated calendar system plays out each day of those ten years (with only actually 7 days in each month). During each turn (which is a single day, or half-day at weekends) the player chooses from a range of solo and social activities, and responds to phone calls from his friends regarding social invitations. The key to the game is that every single decision the player makes affects multiple aspects of their personality, mind and body, so that (for example) going bowling may improve their fitness, their happiness, and reduce their level of energy, as well as having other subtler effects depending who else attended the event, and the characters 'state' when they embark on the activity.

Kudos (scholarly reputation)

Kudos (scholarly reputation service)

Kudos is a software service to help authors of scholarly content enrich and share their publications with the aim of gaining higher impact. Authors of research publications are able to use Kudos to describe their research in plain language, supplement it with information that has been created since the initial publication, communicate it via social media channels, and measure the impact of these activities. Authors are shown graphs showing the full text and article downloads of their content which can then be compared to their social media activities. The company claims that its service increases publication usage by 19% and that it has over 1,000 authors signing up each week.

Awards

In March 2014, Kudos was awarded UK government funding to support its development, as part of the SMART (grant scheme). The company has since (October 2014) been awarded The Charleston Advisor’s Readers’ Choice Award for Best New End User Product. In September 2015, Kudos was named as the winner of the 2015 ALPSP Award for Innovation in Publishing.