22 Things Creative People Do Differently Than The Rest. If You’re Creative, You Will Understand…

 

1. They get inspired at the least expected moment.

They can’t decide when the next big idea will come. It just will, in the least expected way, at the least expected moment.

2. They daydream. A lot.

They are here, but they’re not. They can fly away with their mind at any given moment during a conversation. Don’t be mad at them, it’s just the way they are.

3. They get easily bored.

They need to stay stimulated in order to stay active. They won’t focus on something they don’t like. Call them ADHD or whatever you like, this is just part of their genius.

4. They watch the world with the eyes of a child

There’s a part of them that never grows up, and maybe this is the real secret, observing the world with the eyes of a child.

5. They will fail, and you can be sure they will try again

Life it’s not always easy for a creative, especially for the professional ones. They will fail one thousand time in their life, then they will rise and succeed, only to fail again. Every creative, even the most successful one, has failed and has been rejected one million times. But they finally did it.

6. They are told to get a real job

It’s not easy to be accepted as a creative, especially when your loved ones expect something different from you. Real creatives will follow their dreams.

7. They will follow their heart, even if often their mind thinks otherwise

It’s said that creative people are more likely to worry less about problems and take more risks. This can brings to a thousand fails, but a million satisfactions.

8. They get lost in time

When they are creating they get lost in time and space, they can forget to eat, to drink and even to sleep. When words, colors or ideas start to flow out of their mind there’s nothing else that really matters to them.

9. They work when you sleep and they sleep when you work

Like we said at n. 1, inspiration comes at the most unexpected times. Just take it and make something great out of it.

10. Where most people see a difficulty, they see an opportunity

They can see the bright side of things, and brilliantly come out of troubles in unusual ways.

11. They fall in love with their pieces of work, and hate them the day after

This is still a mystery, but there is some kind of process that makes them extremely fickle about their creations.

12. They hate what they’ve just created, but will totally love it 12 hours later

Just like n. 11, this can happen too.

13. They are humble and proud at the same time

They are always willing to learn, but will be extremely proud and confident when it comes to their ideas and creations.

14. They are always looking to new ways to express themselves

Both if you do it as a job or you are just a creative person, you know there isn’t just one way to express creativity. If you are a photographer you’ll probably love to create in so many other ways. The same applies to painters, art directors, writers and every creative person in general.

15. They procrastinate

Give them a deadline and they will comply with it, but you can be sure they will do 90% of the work the night before the term.

16. They see the other side of the coin

They can always observe situations from a different point of view.

17. They don’t like boundaries

Rules and boundaries are not for them. Many popular creatives in history have even been labeled as rebels.

18. They often don’t like numbers

They are brilliant and can really amaze you at times, but try to let them do the math and you will be surprised by how much they dislike numbers.

19. They are great observers

They often are great people watchers and notice even the smallest detail. People and basically everything can be the inspiration for their next idea.

20. They always make new experiences

As we said before, they need to be stimulated to stay creative. Is there a better way to escape from routine by trying something you never did before?

21. They do it all over again

No matter how far they’ve come with their last creation. If at a given point they don’t like, they won’t think twice and will trash it just to start all over again. And again. And again.

22. They love

They love. Everything. They love life, they love people, they love emotions, they love animals, they love beauty. They can stay in silence watching the most beautiful sunset they’ve ever seen, or be excited for the next big art exhibit in town. No matter what, their love for life is contagious, and if you have some friends like this, stick with them. They will make your life a little more beautiful.

Did you like this post? Share it with the creative ones in your life!

Culling Elephants Leaves an Impact on their Social Structure Decades Later

Scientists are finding that past African elephant culling operations, despite having ended decades ago, have greatly impacted surviving elephant populations and dramatically disrupted their social behavior. Researchers from the University of Sussex studied and compared the social behavior of two elephant herds: one that was severely affected by 1970 and 1980 culling operations and a herd that was relatively unaffected. In their results, published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology, researchers Prof. Karen McComb and Dr. Graeme Shannon found that the elephant herds that had experienced culling operations exhibited signs of post traumatic stress disorder.

Culling is the selective process of removing animals, either for breeding or for controlling overcrowded populations.

During the 1970s and 1980s, as human populations on the African continent expanded, conflicts between humans and elephants escalated as both competed for decreasing land space and depleting natural resources.


Young elephants playing. Photo by Karen McComb.

African nations with local overpopulations of elephants turned to drastic measures in hopes of preserving their countries’ remaining habitat. African elephants (genus Loxodonta) are large herbivores and can eat up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of vegetation daily. Their extensive appetite often leaves habitats devastated, raising competition for land space between elephants and humans. The two most common methods were translocation – moving elephant populations to areas with lower density – and culling. The culling operations targeted mainly adult elephants, removing important family members that possessed crucial survival knowledge.

African elephants are cognitively advanced, social animals. They live in matriarchal societies and form close-knit, multi-generational family groups lead by the eldest and wisest female member. Elephants can live up to 70 years old, and adults are essential for the success and survival of family groups. Adult members are a repository of accumulated knowledge, which they pass on to younger generations.

McComb, Shannon and their team of researchers hypothesized that elephants, who were orphaned by culling operations or otherwise affected by human management practices would exhibit social behavior that is impaired in comparison to elephants that were not affected by culling.

To test their theory, the team conducted research comparing the behavior of two elephant herds: a population in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, which was relatively undisturbed by culling operations, and a dramatically affected herd in South Africa’s Pilanesberg National Park.


Elephants in Amboseli National Park. Photo by Graeme Shannon.

The herd in Pilanesberg National Park is composed of elephants that were orphaned during 1970 and 1980 culling operations in the Kruger National Park, which resulted in the killing of many adult and juvenile animals. The young elephants were translocated to Pilanesberg during the early 1980s and 1990s and today make up the adult population. The researchers found that these surviving elephants suffered significant social consequences from witnessing culling operations and showed effects similar to post traumatic stress disorder in humans.

The researchers conducted two behavioral response studies of the Amboseli and Pilanesberg herds to examine the animals’ social understanding. They played recordings of elephant calls to both of the herds and monitored their responses. These responses were evaluated by the degree of a behavior called “bunching.” Bunching is the defensive response of elephant groups when they detect danger. When feeling threatened, the herd will move closer together, forming a tight-knit cluster. Depending on the level of perceived threat, bunching can take over three minutes or happen in less than one.

The first sound test examined the herds’ responses to the call of an unfamiliar elephant. When the Amboseli herd was presented with the call, they immediately reacted with the appropriate defensive response, bunching together as they moved towards the sound. When presented with the call of a familiar elephant, the Amboseli herd remained calm and relaxed, and carried on with their activities. In contrast, the Pilanesberg herd responses to the calls were random and followed no apparent logic or specific pattern. They often failed to bunch or perceive potential threat when presented with the calls of unfamiliar elephants. The researchers believe their confused responses are evidence of an inability to differentiate between friends and enemies.

The second sound experiment tested the animal’s abilities to distinguish calls from different age classes and thus the ability to determine the calls of dominant individuals. The ability to appropriately assess and respond to the calls of unknown older individuals is crucial for avoiding potential conflicts. Furthermore, the ability to distinguish social rankings is a fundamental skill for individual elephants as they may come in contact with hundreds of others during seasonal migrations.


Elephant bunching response after hearing a playback recording. Photo by Karen McComb.

The Amboseli elephants were able to correctly distinguish between callers of different age groups, in that they were more defensive and bunched together when presented with recorded calls from dominant individuals. In addition, the elephants exhibited investigative smelling and prolonged listening after hearing the call of a dominant individual. In contrast, the Pilanesberg elephants were not able to distinguish between callers from different age groups.

While interpreting their results, the researchers took into account the age differences of the herds. The matriarchs in Pilanesberg were slightly younger, ranging from 24 to 47 years old versus the Amboseli matriarchs that ranged from 23 to 70 years old. The researchers acknowledged that the relatively younger age of Pilanesberg matriarchs may have influenced the herd’s inability to recognize social distinctions. Yet, when the researchers removed the oldest matriarchs (48 years and older) from the Amboseli dataset, the Amboseli herds still showed more normal social behavior.

The study’s results suggest the Pilanesberg herds have experienced a collapse in their social structure due to the lack of adult guidance and knowledge, which has led to weakened decision-making and behavioral responses.

“The elephant population in Pilanesberg has done remarkably well considering the profound trauma associated with culling and translocation,” Shannon told mongabay.com. “Nevertheless, important social skills are compromised within the population, impairing the ability of groups to make appropriate decisions when faced with threatening situations.”


Elephants in Pilanesberg National Park. Photo by Graeme Shannon.

Culling is no longer used for managing African elephant populations. However, with elephant numbers in national parks in Southern Africa presently on the rise, reintroduction of culling methods are bing discussed by management officials.

“Other approaches that have been used to address concerns over human-elephant conflict and habitat impacts have included translocation, contraception and a push to create larger contiguous ranges for elephants by connecting reserves using wildlife corridors,” Shannon explained.

Researchers believe the loss of experienced adults could have critically negative impacts on herds. Moreover, human-induced activities can lead to drastic disturbances in the complex social structures of elephants.

“While this is unlikely to have direct impacts on the numbers of elephants in Pilanesberg, or indeed the persistence of this well-managed population, it does bring into question the impacts that severe human disruption (e.g., poaching) is having on the fabric of elephant society in many other populations of African elephants across the continent,” Shannon said.

“Conserving these populations is more than just a numbers game, it is also essential that complex social function is maintained as this is a crucial aspect of elephant biology and population integrity.”



Citations:

• Shannon, G., Slotow, R., Durant, S. M., Sayialel, K. N., Poole, J., Moss, C., & McComb, K. (2013). Effects of social disruption in elephants persist decades after culling. Frontiers in zoology, 10(1), 62.

Intrepid Travel Ditches Elephant Rides from Tour Itineraries as Tourists Turn Their Backs on Animal Attractions

Savvy salesmen have clearly cottoned on to the fact tourists will pay good money to watch cute creatures perform, often to comic effect, and over the years a thriving industry has developed with all-singing, all-dancing animals, almost as ubiquitous as tacky souvenir stalls.

But the sad reality is that for many of these creatures life is hardly a laugh-a-minute.

The news that Australian-based adventure travel company Intrepid Travel is dropping elephant rides and visits to entertainment venues from their itineraries will no doubt please wildlife fans worldwide.

As the first major tour operator to make such a move, Intrepid has been working closely with the World Society for the Protection of Animals since 2000 to encourage animal-friendly travel.

Their decision to adjust itineraries was based on a three-year research project into the welfare of captive elephants at entertainment venues in Asia, to be published later this year. It’s said to be the most comprehensive overview so far on the wildlife entertainment industry in Thailand.

Asian elephants are highly endangered animals, and it’s thought that with their current rate of decline, they could be extinct within the next three generations.

The demand from tourism means that many animals are being taken from the wild, causing their number to fall even further.

As highly intelligent and social creatures, normally covering large distances in the wild, elephants don’t adapt well to captivity, and the process of forcing them to accept human control can often be a painful one.
But while the picture is bleak, it is by no means black and white.

Many communities rely on elephant rides and circus shows as a form of income, and Intrepid has been working towards educating local communities on improving animal welfare.

Over the past two years, the company has moved towards supporting rehabilitation centres and sanctuaries, venues where tourists can truly enjoy interaction with wild animals. The Uda Walawe National Park Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka and the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand are two examples.
“
We hope that the increased patronage to commendable venues like this will help encourage others to lift their standards,” says Geoff Manchester, Intrepid Travel co-founder.

So far the response from travellers has been positive.

“Helping people to understand the choices they can make whilst travelling can create positive experiences for them and for the animals that they encounter along the way,” says WSPA’s Dr Jan Schmidt-Burbach.

The animal welfare society has also published a series of guidelines to encourage people to become responsible, animal-friendly tourists.

Interacting with wildlife is a highlight of most holidays, and seeing an animal happy in the wild is undoubtedly more rewarding than any outlandish circus act.

Wheels for Hope: A set of wheels for a better future

Written by Steven Lim.

In rural Cambodia, a bicycle can make a world of difference. A small donation of US$60 not only buys a mode of transport where the default is to walk many kilometres on foot, it brings hope for a better future to many young Cambodians. By helping them get to school, and motivating them to complete their education, they stand a much better chance of escaping the poverty trap.

Started in 2012 by a group of passionate cyclists, Wheels for Hope is an initiative that brings bicycles to disadvantaged and impoverished rural communities in Cambodia. In close collaboration with Hope Worldwide Cambodia, Wheels for Hope has carried out 3 donation drives, bringing over 300 donated bicycles to rural Cambodian communities over the past 3 years.

Through social media and word-of-mouth, Wheels for Hope receives donations from Singaporeans of all walks of life, with the amounts growing year by year. Donations received are channelled to Hope Worldwide Cambodia for the purchase of bicycles to be distributed to rural communities. As a tangible link between donor and recipient, photographs of recipients and their news bicycles, specially labelled with the donor’s name are taken and shared with the donor in Singapore.


A team of 9 travelled to Cambodia in February this year to bring bicycles to 2 rural communities in Oudong and Kampong Cham. Donated funds were sent to the Hope Worldwide Cambodia office for the purchase and transport of 120 bicycles to the respective communities.

 
A small step towards a better future
Poverty remains a pressing issue in Cambodia, particularly so in rural areas. 8 in 10 Cambodians live in rural areas where infrastructure is poor and economic opportunities are very limited. Most rural Cambodians are small-scale farmers, practising farming and fishing at a subsistence level, using traditional methods that are low in productivity. Rural Cambodians have limited access to education, health and other public services.
The team drove for hours on dusty laterite roads, passing by wide expanses of brown fields covered by dried-out rice stalks and stacked columns of hay.

“Farmers produce one crop of rice per year during the wet season. Fields are left empty during the dry season,” explained 39-year old Phoung Bunthy, social support officer with the Sihanouk Hospital Centre of HOPE and translator for the team throughout the trip.

Without irrigation infrastructure, farmers are unable to tap on groundwater for rice paddies, a water-intensive cultivation method. The limited income from such single-crop subsistence farming is one contributing factor in rural poverty. Education offers a way out of this poverty trap.

But the harsh realities of day-to-day living takes precedence over education.

“Many pupils will not come to school if, for example, the father used the bicycle to go to the market. The school serves 3 villages which is 3 to 5 kilometres away from here,” explained 56-year old Ou Song, a teacher in Kampong Cham.

This is but one of the many difficulties faced by children going to school.

For most rural Cambodians, the default mode of transport for daily activities such as collecting water, fishing, visiting the market, cultivating the fields and going to school, to name but a few, is by foot. That means some children must walk five kilometres just to go to school.

A bicycle donation enables the student to go to school and motivates them to complete their education, an important enabler out of the poverty trap. The benefits extend to the recipient’s family as well. As 13-year old Worn Navy explains, the bicycle is also used for making errands to the market for the family.

However, much more needs to be done. For every pupil that received a bicycle from Wheels for Hope, there remains many others who would not be able to afford the fees, uniform and time for basic education.

Every effort counts towards a better future for these rural communities. To be a part of these efforts, please join the Facebook group at www.facebook.com/groups/wheelsforhope

You're Never Too Young

Written by Justin Deimen.

Nine-year-old Ken from the Philippines is one impressive young boy! Having grown up around stray dogs in his town, he dreamt of having a shelter to help them someday. He realized that ‘someday’ need not be far away, and so he took the first step, with the help of his father, to realize his dreams of a better world. However, he achieved it sooner than he expected, as photos of his exploits found its way around the Internet, and kind-hearted souls (like the readers of this site!) helped him get started by donating to his cause.




Ken first started feeding the hungry and sick stray cats and dogs around his home, socializing with them and letting them get to know the humans in the area. But he knew that to keep this up, he would eventually need funds to set up a no-kill shelter where he could really help his fur-buddies, namely Blackie, Brownie, and White Puppy – the three dogs whose pictures started the donation trail three months ago.



When the first tranche of donations came in, Ken and his father were able to build a temporary shelter for the three dogs in their garage and named it ‘The Happy Animals Club’. Through their industrious care, the animals were able to get back to normal weight and their wounds have healed up. While Ken has grown attached to his friends, he also knows that his shelter needs to these animals homes where they can be happy forever. He plans to put them up for adoption once they’ve completely healed. From the continuing flow of donations, Ken and his father have managed to sign a one-year lease for a space where they can continue to operate a non-profit, no-kill animal shelter for street animals.

We are never too young or too old to make a difference to the world. The biggest obstacle for most is simply getting started. Let’s get off our chairs and start pursuing that idea or dream of making an impact.
Visit Ken’s website to learn more about the shelter – Happy Animals Club

Why Riding Elephants Is Bad For Animals -- And Bad For Business

Following the lead of STA Travel, the tour company Intrepid Travel announced that it was banning all tours involving elephant rides -- a huge step towards responsible wildlife tourism. The company, which guides over 100,000 travellers every year, is no longer offering packages that include places where elephants are used only for entertainment value.

“Our focus is on educating people, and teaching local communities about animal welfare and environmental conservation,” said Geoff Manchester, co-founder of Intrepid Travel. “While we once included elephant rides or entertainment venue visits, we’re now working with rehabilitation and sanctuary facilities. We hope that the increased patronage to commendable venues like this will help encourage others to lift their standards.”

Many animal advocates have called on tourists not to take elephant tours. In a piece titled, “Why Elephant Riding Should Be Removed from Your Bucket List,” travel site World Nomads writes:

If people saw the videos (which can be found all over the internet) of elephants being beaten with bullhooks or electric prods, or worse, would they be so keen to hop aboard these animals for the sake of saying “I rode an elephant?” Probably not.

Intrepid Travel has been working with the World Society for the Protection of Animals, which publishes guidelines to responsible wildlife tourism.

Madness in the Village of Elephants: 26 Pachyderms Slaughtered

Poachers shot the animals from an elephant-observation tower used by scientists and visitors for decades. 

Two pachyderms walk through a mud puddle in the Central African Republic's Village of Elephants. (Photo: Wildlife Conservation Society)

In the forest clearing locals call the “Village of Elephants,” or Dzanga Bai, 17 heavily armed men arrived on Wednesday, May 8, with AK-47s. They were bound for the observation tower where tourists in the Central African Republic have often come to admire the forest elephants, and where researchers have worked to decipher the language of elephants for more than 20 years.

“I’m used to being around carcasses and I know what people are capable of.”

It was over in a few horrific minutes.

When guards who had previously been disarmed by rebel forces went back yesterday, May 9, they counted the butchered carcasses of 26 elephants killed for their ivory, including four babies. 

The killing happened in the Dzanga-Sangha Protected Area,in the southwest corner of the country, on the border with Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Dzanga Bai itself is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 2010, the CBS show 60 Minutes described it as “one of the most magical places on Earth.”

At least for the moment, Seleka rebel forces have ordered the poachers out of the area, according to Anna Feistner of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), who worked there until a few weeks ago. The rebels now control the government in the Central African Republic (or CAR). But they do not necessarily control their own forces in the field, she said. “Many of them come in from other countries and do not recognize the hierarchy or the government.”

A consortium of concerned groups, including UNESCO, WWF, and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), together with various national governments, is now pressuring the government in Banqui, the capital, to send a military force to the Dzanga-Sangha area and bring rebel gangs under control. But no one knows if the poachers at Dzanga Bai were themselves part of a rebel group, said Feistner, or if they belong to the Sudanese poaching gangs that have worked in the area in recent years. She plans to head back to the Cameroon border on May 14 to keep up political pressure to protect the elephants.

The bloody tusks themselves will almost certainly end up in China, where a seemingly insatiable demand for ivory knickknacks has recently driven the price for ivory to $1,300 a pound. The fear is that rising Chinese demand, together with the continuing violence and political chaos in the CAR, will enable wholesale poaching to resume, possibly on the scale of last year’s killing of 300 elephants in a nearby national park in Cameroon. 

The good news, and the tragedy, is that the surviving elephants are unlikely to return to Dzanga Bai any time soon. “One of the reasons it’s been possible to watch the elephants there is that they felt protected and safe,” said Feister. “So this is awful, really, especially since a lot of the shooting happened from the platform where Andrea Turkalo has been studying them for years, and that tourists have visited. The animals will probably have dispersed” into the forest of Dzanga-Ndoki National Park to the south.

Turkalo, a Massachusetts biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, also left the area a few weeks ago because of the escalating violence. She has been studying elephant behavior and communication at Dzanga Bai since 1991, and over the years has identified more than 4,000 elephants there—with about 1,400 individual elephants using the Bai in any given year. She knows many of the regulars by name.

Reached by phone on May 9, Turkalo recalled a brief return visit to her research camp in April 2013, just before she left for the United States. “The first thing I noticed was the look in peoples’ eyes. They were demoralized and frightened. I’m the lucky one. I get to leave. They have to stay, it’s their country.”

Turkalo said she has been hardening herself for what happened this week. “I’ve worked in the Central African Republic for 30 years on the ground. I was in the north when the Sudanese poachers hammered all the savannah elephants along the Chadian border. I’m used to being around carcasses, and I know what people are capable of. I knew the situation was deteriorating. When you work with a known population of animals, you’ve really got to prepare yourself for the inevitable. I’m pretty good about handling death and other emotional issues. You have to be that way, or it’s just too rough.”

Like many in the environmental community, she reserved her outrage mainly for the Chinese customers who regard ivory trinkets as a symbol of status rather than shame and who are now rapidly driving elephant populations across Africa to extinction.

Shortly before she left the CAR, a Chinese company had arrived in the area with a permit to mine gold and diamonds in the Dzanga-Sangha Protected Area. The mining company also evacuated the area briefly, but “they, came back a week ago with the Seleka protecting them. It’s the typical situation.  You see this over and over in Africa. When the chaos starts, that’s the time for moving commodities—things like diamonds and ivory, and this is what’s happening now. We can’t protect the elephants, but we can protect the Chinese taking out the diamonds.”

Turkalo does not know when she will be able to get back to Dzanga Bai. But she recalled her last ordinary day there, on March 23, 2013.  “The weather was perfect. There was a slight breeze. The light was magnificent. In the late afternoon, you get these long rays and a golden aura. I think there were about 80 elephants, and there was a new calf that day with a female I’d known for 20 years, named Delta.  If I had to have a last day anywhere, that was the day I would have chosen.”

A Simple, Elegant Invention That Draws Water From Air

The WarkaWater gathers water from fog and condensation. Named after an Ethiopian fig tree, it consists of a 30-foot bamboo frame and a nylon net. It was invented by an Italian firm and three of them are shown here in an Ethiopian village. Courtesy of Architecture and Vision

When Italian designer Arturo Vittori and Swiss architect Andreas Vogler first visited Ethiopia in 2012, they were shocked to see women and children forced to walk miles for water.

Only of Ethiopians have access to a reliable water supply. Some travel up to six hours a day to fetch some or, worse, resorts to using stagnant ponds contaminated by human waste, resulting in the spread of disease.
Worldwide, a whopping 768 million people — two and a half times the U.S. population — don't have access to . So just imagine if we could just pull water out of thin air?

That's what Vittori and Vogler asked once they saw the magnitude of problem and vowed to take action. Their firm, , has since come up with WarkaWater, a majestic palm-like structure that may look like something you'd see in a modern art museum but it's been designed to harvest water from the air.

WarkaWater, which is named after an Ethiopian fig tree, is composed of a 30-foot bamboo frame containing a fog-harvesting nylon net that can be easily lowered for repairs and to allow communities to measure the water level.

Collecting water through condensation is hardly a new technique, but the creators of WarkaWater say their tree-inspired design is more effective, maximizing surface and optimizing every angle to produce up to 26 gallons of drinkable water a day — enough for a .

Many Failed Attempts By Aid Groups
Western organizations have been working to provide clean water access in Africa for decades, so WarkaWater joins a very long list of earlier attempts. So far, high-tech solutions, like the once-promising Playpump (a hybrid merry-go-round water pump), have failed, mostly due to high costs and maintenance issues.

This is where WarkaWater could stand apart — as a lower-tech solution that is easy to repair and far more affordable than digging wells in the rocky Ethiopian plateau.

Each water tower costs $550 — a Playpump is $14,000 — and its creators say the price will drop significantly if they start mass-producing it. The structure takes three days and six people to install and doesn't call for any special machinery or scaffolding.

"Once locals have the necessary know-how, they will be able to teach other villages and communities to build the WarkaWater towers," says Vittori, who is already working on WarkaWater 2.0, an upgraded version that may include solar panels and LED bulbs to provide light after dark.

The firm is in the process of raising funds to begin installing towers in Ethiopia next year. And WarkaWater could also prove useful in other areas, like deserts, which have the critical feature for collecting condensation: a dramatic change in temperature between nightfall and daybreak.

This elegant invention may not solve all of the world's water woes, but it could improve accessibility one drop at a time.

‘Wolf Hall/Bring Up the Bodies’: Theater Review

Keith Pattison

Ben Miles as Cromwell

 

The Bottom Line

"Game of Thrones" in Tudor England.

Venue

Aldwych Theater, London (runs through Sept. 6)

Cast

Ben Miles, Nathaniel Parker, Lydia Leonard, Lucy Briers, Paul Jesson, John Ramm, Nicholas Day, Joey Batey, Nicholas Boulton, Leah Brotherhead, Olivia Darnley

Playwright

Mike Poulton

Director

Jeremy Herrin

 

Hilary Mantel’s prize-winning historical novels are masterfully compressed into a bloodthirsty six-hour court soap opera by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

LONDON - Literary sensations that became unlikely blockbuster bestsellers, Hilary Mantel’s 2009 novel Wolf Hall and its 2012 sequel Bring Up The Bodies were always juicy candidates for stage and screen. A fictionalized biography of Thomas Cromwell, the real-life London blacksmith’s son who rose to become a close advisor to King Henry VIII during his multiple marriages and turbulent split with the Roman Catholic Church, Mantel’s books re-imagined ancient stories of royal power politics through a filter of contemporary language and psychology. Highbrow yet accessible, swept along by lean present-tense prose, both novels won the Man Booker Prize and numerous other awards.

A third book in the trilogy is on the way, along with a long-form TV adaptation to be broadcast by the BBC and PBS next year. Tony and Olivier award-winner Mark Rylance will play Cromwell, with Homeland star Damian Lewis as Henry. Meanwhile, the Royal Shakespeare Company is doing brisk box-office business with these two weighty stage adaptations, which premiered in Stratford to great acclaim before making their West End debut earlier this month. Given the global success of Mantel’s books, not to mention the salacious Showtime TV series The Tudors, a U.S. transfer seems a strong possibility when this limited London run ends in September.

Director Jeremy Herrin’s six-hour marathon of bed-hopping, back-stabbing Tudor tyranny opens like House of Cards and ends like Game of Thrones. Heavy on dialogue and low on technical trickery, the treatment is fairly straight and conservative, but full of quality craftsmanship throughout. Slightly trimmed and rewritten since Stratford, Mike Poulton’s adaptations keep the language accessible and the political context lucid enough for a general audience. They are also surprisingly funny, with a more broadly comic tone than Mantel’s books. Thanks largely to Paul Jesson’s boisterous performance as Cromwell’s former patron, the cheerfully corrupt cleric Cardinal Wolsey, Wolf Hall initially feels closer to bawdy farce than political thriller.

Best known in the U.K. for his TV comedy roles, Ben Miles gives a measured and sympathetic performance as Cromwell, though he's a little colorless for such a complex historical figure. Previous stage and screen portraits, notably in Maxwell Anderson's Anne of the Thousand Days and Robert Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons, have made Cromwell a ruthless villain. Mantel and Poulton are kinder, painting this working-class outsider as a skilled social climber with a shadowy past as a mercenary, but also a forward-thinking modernizer, loyal friend and principled family man. When he commits cruel acts, he does so in the service of the Tudor throne, chiefly to maintain England’s fragile peace by helping Henry to sire a male successor.

Nathaniel Parker makes Henry a largely comic creation, childlike in his appetites and romantically naive, but generous and conscientious when his ever-changing moods allow. Lydia Leonard also gives great diva as the King’s second wife Anne Boleyn, a hot-tempered gold-digger who is smart enough to hold Henry to sexual ransom until she is made queen, and sharp-witted enough to recognize Cromwell’s latent potential as both ally and enemy. Both are essentially engaged in the same task, competing for Henry’s favors while dodging poisonous rivals in court.

This handsome RSC production looks stark and monumental, a commendably counterintuitive approach to dramatic clichés of Tudor gluttony and pageantry. Christopher Oram’s single set is a brutalist concrete interior with an imposing crucifix design in its back wall, which assumes multiple guises from palace to prison to country garden. Oram is also responsible for the costumes, which mostly stick within a muted color scheme of velveteen blacks, earthy browns and bronze fleshtones. Paule Constable’s strikingly minimal lighting makes deep shadow and candlelight part of the canvas. The overall effect feels like watching a Rembrandt canvas brought to life. Gorgeous.

Chronicling Cromwell’s bumpy rise to power, Wolf Hall condenses 600 pages and eight years into less than three hours on stage. The compression is elegantly done, though there are inevitably some sacrifices, losing Mantel’s poetic eye for description and Cromwell’s sardonic inner monologues. Flashbacks to his abusive childhood, which provided a hint of psychological shading in the book, have been excised. The death of his wife and daughters skip by in wordless tableaux so fleeting that an inattentive audience might miss them.

Largely composed of fast-paced dialogue and snappy one-liners, with no time for distracting visual spectacle, Wolf Hall could almost be a radio play.

The second drama, Bring Up the Bodies, also opens with comic levity but soon takes a darker turn. It also feels more Shakespearean in its emotional and political depths, with Cromwell playing Iago to Henry’s Othello, mobilizing the king’s sexual jealousy in a plot against Anne and her alleged army of secret lovers. A more morally ambivalent figure in Wolf Hall, the former blacksmith’s boy begins to flex his muscles here, engineering the bloody downfall of the arrogant aristocrats who once scorned him with all the cool, methodical, ruthless precision of Michael Corleone in The Godfather II. Miles recalibrates his performance accordingly here, giving Cromwell an extra glint of steely triumphalism.

Spanning the same stage time but a shorter chronological period than Wolf Hall – roughly one year instead of eight – Bring Up the Bodies has more light and shade, more room to breathe. A near-fatal jousting accident is evoked with minimal props and sound effects, while a debauched palace orgy provides plenty of damning evidence for the ever-watchful Cromwell, even though he is a willing participant. Cardinal Wolsey also returns in ghostly form to caution and guide his former student, like some 16^th century Obi-Wan Kenobi. In a stylistic break from the first play, Herrin deploys ominously long silences in two highly charged scenes, when death hangs heavy in the air.

Ending with a chilling but tastefully staged bloodbath, Bring Up The Bodies is the deeper and darker of the two plays. It highlights the sexual double standards of Henry’s court, where noblemen pimp their teenage daughters to the king in return for favors, and yet queens can be executed for treason on mere suspicion of adultery. It also contains scenes of political tyranny – show trials, forced confessions, torture and beheadings – that still resonate today, from Iran to North Korea, China to Saudi Arabia. History repeats itself, first as farce, then as tragedy. After a light first half, this masterful six-hour banquet ends with a highly satisfying main course.

Venue: Aldwych Theater, London (runs through Sept. 6)
Cast: Ben Miles, Nathaniel Parker, Lydia Leonard, Lucy Briers, Paul Jesson, John Ramm, Nicholas Day, Joey Batey, Nicholas Boulton, Leah Brotherhead, Olivia Darnley
Playwright: Mike Poulton, based on the novels by Hilary Mantel
Director: Jeremy Herrin
Set and costume designer: Christopher Oram
Lighting designer: Paule Constable
Music: Stephen Warbeck
Movement: Sian Williams
Presented by Matthew Byam Shaw, Nia Janis and Nick Salmon for Playful, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Tulchin Bartner Productions, Georgia Gatti for Playful

Tom Ford on the Powerful Influence of Rihanna's Instagram

The designer tells Style.com's Tim Blanks that customers respond to what @badgalriri posts "while she's naked in bed" — not what critics are saying.

Jon Furniss/Invision/AP

Ahead of receiving the CFDA Lifetime Achievement Award next Monday, Tom Ford sat down with Style.com's Tim Blanks to discuss his career, as well as the power of Instagram.

Ford believes "customers don't care anymore about reviews or hard-copy publications." Instead, he thinks Rihanna's Instagram is more influential. "They care what picture Rihanna just Instagrammed while she's naked in bed, what new shoes she has on, how she's talking about them. That's what they respond to," he explained. Given that Instagram has shut down @badgalriri's account for violating their term of use with her topless photos, we hope Ford is aware that seeing what the pop star is doing nude isn't so accessible anymore.

Now, we wonder what Robin Givhan or Vanessa Friedman would have to say about this. Because we'd most certainly read their take on Rihanna's impact on the style community.

Coldplay’s Chris Martin Turns Sadness into Gladness: Concert Review

The Bottom Line

The band’s striving for perfection leaves no margin for error.

Venue

Royce Hall at UCLA
Los Angeles, CA
(May 19, 2014)

The raw introspection of the new songs is tempered by the celebratory nature of the old favorites.

Coldplay have gone about planning the release of their sixth studio album, Ghost Stories, with all the precision of a military campaign, perhaps in deference to the fact it’s their first release since moving over to Warner Music Group’s Atlantic Records as part of Universal’s divestiture of their Parlophone label.  The only thing Chris Martin and company didn’t count on – or perhaps they did, given the contents of the record – is his much-publicized break-up with Gwyneth Paltrow, and perhaps that, more than anything, is the reason he has chosen not to give any real one-on-one interviews on the subject, preferring to let the songs do the talking for him.

That said, there’s always been a sense of the lovelorn romantic about Martin and the band’s music, even in happier times, though there is a sense of attenuation about the album and the handful of concerts in their wake. I’ve now seen Coldplay perform these songs three separate times – once during their show at Sony Pictures soundstages in March, which introduced the material and served as the basis for last Sunday’s hour-long NBC special, another time during their iHeartRadio Album Release Party at Clear Channel’s Burbank theater Friday night and then again at Monday night’s Royce Hall concert, one of only six “intimate” theater dates spread out across five countries through the end of the year. Interspersed into their set alongside sing-along crowd favorites like “Viva la Vida,” “Paradise” and “Clocks,” they provide a bit of minor key relief – allowing some welcome time for introspection. Taken alone on the new album, brooding songs like the distorted vocals of “Midnight,” the acoustic raga of “Ink” or the eerie, free-floating underwater vibe and muted horn sounds of “Another’s Arms” seem to drag, even if the Avicii collaboration, “A Sky Full of Stars,” tries to make up for the doom und gloom with the band’s patented arms-wide-open anthem-like twirl.

Proclaiming, “We will never play another show like this in our lives,” Martin promises a set that will incorporate rarities, favorites and new songs, all of which he squeezes into a maximum efficiency, 80-minute, one-encore show that mirrors the Ghost Stories album’s similarly minimal nine-song, 43-minute running time (minus the three “bonus” tracks included on the Target exclusive deluxe edition). Starting off with the relatively obscure “Atlas,” their song from The Hunger Games – Catching Fire soundtrack, it’s obvious this isn’t the arena-rock Coldplay for the masses, but one for true fans, a scaling-down that goes well with the new album’s more intimate scope. Still, “Charlie Brown,” one of the singles from Mylo Xylo, offers a nice contrast leading into “The Scientist,” and its apt lyric, “Nobody said it would be easy… Let’s go back to the start,” signs that all hasn’t been well for awhile with Martin’s romantic dreams. “Don’t Panic,” the first track on the band’s debut album, 2000’s Parachutes, perhaps the closest in feel to their latest in its introspective confessional, is next, introduced by Martin as a song from “before most of you were born.”

According to Martin, the band hadn’t played the psychabilly-tinged “A Whisper,” from 2002’s A Rush of Blood to the Head, “anywhere in the world for 12 years,” while X&Y’s  “’Til Kingdom Come” finds drummer Will Champion on piano and Guy Berryman playing harp, a song that makes clear the unbroken line connecting Coldplay to latter-day roots artists like Mumford & Sons, marked by Martin’s classical-inspired keyboards and not-so-secret weapon Jonny Buckland’s complementary, always melodic guitar riffs.

“Viva la Vida” and “Paradise” up the ante before delving into the new material, showcasing eight of the album’s nine cuts, starting with “Always in My Head,” one of the less notable tracks, though the R&B groove of “Magic,” highlighted by Martin’s falsetto, has grown on me. “True Love” is another song that has wormed its way into my head (with its aching lyric, “Tell me you love me/If you don’t then lie/Lie to me”), while the pulsing electronica beat and muted, Bon Iver-esque vocals of the Eno-inspired ambient “Midnight” remain an impressive, if failed, attempt at reinvention, with Martin playing the lasers like a theremin harp, the overall effect closer to alternative bands like alt-j.

The shimmering “Oceans” summarizes the sonic immersion of Ghost Stories, and closes the concert, leading into the three-song encore which begins with the confetti-laden “A Sky Full of Stars” into a surprise, very bluesy, Stonesy take on “Yellow,” added onto the playlist for “Fix You” and dedicated to Kevin Cordasco, the 16-year-old who lost his life to a rare form of cancer in March, 2013.  Martin takes to the piano for “O,” the album closer and perhaps the most vulnerable song on the album, with its invocation of a flock of birds and its vow to “fly on.” Indeed, Coldplay manage to turn heartbreak into transcendence, which is what all great artists do. Give Chris Martin a break as he works through his issues the only way he knows how – in the music.

Set list:
Atlas
Charlie Brown
‘The Scientist
Don’t Panic
A Whisper
‘Til Kingdom Come
Viva la Vida
Paradise
Always in my Heart
Magic
Ink
True Love
Midnight
Another’s Arms
Oceans
A Sky Full of Stars
Yellow
O

'The Wil Wheaton Project': TV Review

Danny Feld/Syfy

 

The Bottom Line

Wheaton's excitement and depth of knowledge regarding the material he's collating and presenting makes his show unique, even if its format is largely cribbed. 

Air date

Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on Syfy, beginning May 27

Cast

Wil Wheaton

 

For nerds, by nerds, the Syfy show is a funny and frenzied look at the week that was for fantasy, comic book and sci-fi series.

Nothing says the geeks have inherited the Earth (on TV, anyway) like geek hero Wil Wheaton (also known as actor, blogger, podcaster, avid tweeter and former nerd pin-up Wil Wheaton) being given his own show. The Wil Wheaton Project is essentially The Soup for nerds, with an identical setup: Wheaton stands in front of a greenscreen and riffs on a weekly roundup of jokes and edited segments in front of a live audience. The difference here is that the content is geared specifically for fans of series like Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and movie franchises like X-Men.

Unlike The Soup though, there's more of a requirement to be familiar with the material first. Viewers don't have to be intimately acquainted with reality programming to laugh at the clips Joel McHale lampoons or already be aware of the viral Internet videos Daniel Tosh offers up for inspection. Instead, The Wil Wheaton Project is betting on an audience who is coming in fully prepared, so if viewers get the joke behind a line like, "I saw more survivors at the Red Wedding," the results are suitably hilarious.

Nerd culture seems to be at an all-time-high saturation point, so Wheaton has plenty to comment on during the weekly half-hour show -- so much so that the pace is at a whirlwind. In addition to alighting on worthwhile TV moments from the week (including from shows like Penny Dreadful, Salem and Vikings), there are also fun tweaks to shows like Cosmos, where the editing team slows down Neil deGrasse Tyson saying deeply philosophical things, making his seem heavily under the influence.

Some of the best moments though are the ones that don't require any repackaging, like John Malkovich's narcoleptic approach to promoting his upcoming NBC series Crossbones, or the incredibly bizarre commencement speech P. Diddy gave where he called everyone unicorns. And as if all of that wasn't enough, there are two segments -- "Wil's Memo" and "Shoutouts" -- that do quick clip-rolls of bizarre Internet content, in addition to weekly appearances from Wheaton's friends (next up: Felicia Day). If some of the jokes don't quite land, there's no time to dwell on it.

Wheaton also isn't afraid to take some jabs at Syfy, "the hand that feeds." Saying that the network doesn't know what it's done by letting him have a show because "they're too busy tying to combine a shark and an earthquake," was funny, but even funnier was a fake "Syfy Showcase" promo later in the show that is too strange to explain, but was pitch-perfect.

Despite a strong inaugural episode, there are still some kinks to be worked out. Wheaton, channeling a nervous energy, only appeared to relax fully during a few of his jokes, but much more of the material felt stilted. It's a small thing that will surely only get more streamlined as Wheaton settles into the role. For now, his energy translates mostly into a geeky exuberance of the Chris Hardwick variety. In fact, contentwise, The Wil Wheaton Project feels more like a competitor to Hardwick's Nerdist empire than that of The Soup of Tosh.0, but a visit by Hardwick (a longtime friend of Wheaton's) in the first episode neutralized that angle. The two Internet curators just want everyone to be laughing at and enjoying the same nerdy things (even if that means getting #PoopWheaton trending).

Wheaton has been commenting on nerdy pop culture for a very long time on the Internet, building up goodwill and an audience who will want him to succeed (for their sakes as much as his). His shift to Syfy is one that has been a long time coming, and his excitement and depth of knowledge regarding the material he's collating and presenting makes The Wil Wheaton Project unique, even if its format is largely cribbed. And despite a few hiccups, the ultimate takeaway is what Wheaton himself said to kick off the series: "Nerds, we got a show."

'Maleficent': Film Review

The Bottom Line

With a dynamic blend of live action and effects, this is a dark, dazzling and psychologically nuanced fairy-tale reinvention.

Opens

May 30 (Disney)

Cast

Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Sharlto Copley, Sam Riley

Director

Robert Stromberg

Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning topline Disney's reimagining of "Sleeping Beauty."

No stranger to larger-than-life characters, Angelina Jolie doesn’t chew the estimable scenery in Maleficent — she infuses it, wielding a magnetic and effortless power as the magnificently malevolent fairy who places a curse on a newborn princess. Her iconic face subtly altered with prosthetics, she’s the heart and soul (Maleficent has both, it turns out) of Disney’s revisionist, live-action look at its most popular cartoon villain, the self-described Mistress of All Evil from 1959’s Sleeping Beauty. A few bumpy patches notwithstanding, the new feature is an exquisitely designed, emotionally absorbing work of dark enchantment. With the production’s star wattage, well-known source material and multipronged branding push, the studio should see its $175 million gamble on a first-time director stir up box-office magic both domestically and in international markets.

As the Broadway musical Wicked did for the Wicked Witch of the West, the movie humanizes Maleficent by creating an origin story, revealing a shocking betrayal that turned the kind fairy vengeful. Reworking an age-old tale that has undergone countless variations over the centuries, the screenplay by Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast) draws from Charles Perrault’s 1697 “La Belle au bois dormant” and the animated Disney feature that gave the spiteful character a name and a deliciously sinister personality — which Jolie deepens while still finding the kick in it. There’s no hundred-year sleep in the new film’s timeline, and the handsome prince is a bit player in a story whose true center is a love that has nothing to do with happily-ever-after romance.

But magical fairy-tale elements still abound in the debut helming effort of Robert Stromberg, production designer on Avatar and a longtime visual effects artist whose credits include Pan’s Labyrinth, The Hunger Games and Life of Pi. “Let us tell an old story anew,” the film’s voiceover narration begins, setting a tone of once-upon-a-time with a twist. (The opening scenes were written by an uncredited John Lee Hancock for late-in-production reshoots.) Though the narration sometimes states what’s already obvious, Janet McTeer delivers it with mellifluous and warm authority.

Those early scenes show the blossoming love between two orphans: a compassionate fairy girl named Maleficent and a human boy, Stefan. Played as kids by Isobelle Molloy and Michael Higgins, and as teens by Ella Purnell and Jackson Bews, they grow apart as adults. Jolie’s Maleficent is busy as protector of the moors, and Stefan is driven by ruthless ambition to attain his kingdom’s crown. He’s played by Sharlto Copley as the epitome of cravenness — a far cry from the just, noble and dreamy kings of many a childhood story, including the source for this one.

To secure that crown, Stefan commits an act of unspeakable cruelty against Maleficent. The mutilation takes place offscreen, but its effects are fully felt; Maleficent’s heartrending reaction recalls Jolie’s cry of anguish as Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart. To call Maleficent a woman scorned would be the mildest of understatements. And so her cruelty is understandable, if not justifiable, when, in a scene of beautifully orchestrated suspense and terror, she attends the christening of King Stefan’s child, Aurora, and casts her under a spell, dooming her to begin a very long nap at age 16, after the famously foreordained incident with a spinning-wheel needle.

The teenage Aurora, appearing three-quarters of an hour into the movie, is played by Elle Fanning with a preternatural brightness. (Jolie’s daughter Vivienne Jolie-Pitt takes her screen bow as the 5-year-old princess.) The opposition between the innocent, openhearted girl and the hate-filled fairy queen has the necessary archetypal pull, and their initial meeting, in the night forest, is one of the most striking sequences in the Disney canon.

There’s a diamond-in-the-rough aspect to Aurora’s loveliness; she’s no conventional Disney Princess but a child of nature with a strong sense of justice and an innate toughness — qualities that link her to the young Maleficent. Assuming that Maleficent is her fairy godmother and not her nemesis, she befriends her, and gradually Maleficent grows protective of her unwitting victim and conflicted beneath her poise. As in Brave, there’s a deeply felt maternal bond informing the action, but in this case it’s one defined not by blood but by affinity and respect. A prince (Brenton Thwaites) shows up — on a white horse, no less — but he’s hardly a key element of the drama.

The separate worlds of lovers-turned-enemies Maleficent and Stefan are divided by a wall of thorns and vividly imagined, defined in ways that bridge the stylized (inspired by the animated feature and vintage illustrations) and the richly textured organic. Stromberg and producer Joe Roth have enlisted a team of ace collaborators, and for the most part the film seamlessly combines the work of the actors with the costume design by Anna B. Sheppard, the production design of Gary Freeman and Dylan Cole, and the Carey Villegas-supervised visual effects.

The enchanted moors combine a misty, painterly quality with a make-believe sparkle, although the resident mud creatures, with their Darth Vader voices, are as distracting as the rock monsters in Noah. On the human side, there are quintessential storybook settings, august castles and expansive fields of war. The 3D, though unnecessary, lends a subtle depth to the visuals.

The most extraordinary visual effect, though, is Jolie’s transformation into the title character. With the help of prosthetic appliances, contact lenses and a team led by creature-design whiz Rick Baker, Maleficent has iridescent eyes and cheekbones like knives. Jolie gives her a regal bearing and an ultra-composed way of speaking. In battle scenes that are integral to the story but whose scale and clamor feel like concessions to contemporary action-movie norms, Maleficent is right in the fray, a Valkyrie facing down invaders.

Tempering her rage and intensity is the raven Diaval (Sam Riley, equipped with beaklike schnoz), Maleficent’s shape-shifting sidekick of sorts. Their back-and-forth has a comedic edge. Providing broader comic relief and whimsy are three tiny pixies played by Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple and Lesley Manville through a combo of performance capture and CGI. Entrusted by the king with caring for Aurora before her fateful 16th birthday, they snap out of their pixel-based bodies into human size but remain hopelessly pixilated — clownishly inept at childcare.

The comedy is never overstated, whereas the swell and bombast of James Newton Howard’s score comes on strong in the early sequences before finding a groove. For most of the movie, Stromberg strikes the right balance between intimacy and spectacle, and Dean Semler’s fluent camerawork reveals the invented world with a sophisticated take on the primal play of darkness and light.

Production companies: Roth Films
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, Lesley Manning, Brenton Thwaites, Kenneth Cranham, Ella Purnell, Jackson Bews, Isobelle Molloy, Michael Higgins, Eleanor Worthington-Cox, Vivienne Jolie-Pitt, Janet McTeer Director: Robert Stromberg Screenwriter: Linda Woolverton  Producer: Joe Roth Executive producers: Angelina Jolie, Michael Vieira, Don Hahn, Palak Patel, Matt Smith, Sarah Bradshaw Director of photography: Dean Semler Production designers: Gary Freeman, Dylan Cole Costume designer: Anna B. Sheppard  Editors: Chris Lebenzon, Richard Pearson
Composer: James Newton Howard
Senior visual effects supervisor: Carey Villegas
Special makeup effects artist: Rick Baker
Rated PG, 97 minutes

UTA, Atria Books Partner to Launch Publishing Imprint for Digital Celebrities

Getty Images

Justine Ezarik

YouTube stars Shay Carl, Shane Dawson, iJustine, Connor Franta and Joey Graceffa will release books on Keywords Press over the next year.

Internet stars are crossing back into print -- at least, that's the plan for UTA and Atria Publishing Group, who are launching Keywords Press, an imprint that will publish books by digital personalities.

"Keywords Press is being built to work with new authors who not only have unique voices, but also have a special and direct relationship with their fans," Atria president and publisher Judith Curr said in a statement. "We believe that this generation of digital stars, who are unprecedented in how they've built their brands and relate to their audiences, gives us an opportunity to rethink the traditional publishing model."

Keywords intends to publish six to ten titles annually in both print and digital formats. It will begin with YouTube stars-turned-authors Shay Butler (aka ShayCarl), Shane Dawson, Justine Ezarik (aka iJustine), Connor Franta and Joey Graceffa, who are slated to release their first books between late 2014 and early 2015.

"Many of our clients were interested in creating books, but when we surveyed the marketplace, we didn't feel like there was a publishing apparatus created to really take advantage of the unique nature of online stars and their relationship with fans," UTA head of digital media Brent Weinstein said in a statement. The agency reps Dawson, Ezarik and Graceffa, although Keywords authors will not be restricted to UTA clients.

Because of the high degree of fan engagement associated with Internet fame, Keywords books will be somewhat crowdsourced, according to Curr. "We are excited for our new authors to work directly with their fans to determine what stories they want told," she said in a statement. "We anticipate publishing works ranging from serious to comedic, fiction to nonfiction, practical advice to personal memoir."

Atria, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, will hold world publishing and audio rights on all Keywords titles.

Google Must Do More to Help Fight U.K. Piracy, Report Finds

"Search engines can – and must – use the resources available to them in order to safeguard the U.K."s creative industries," says a report from the prime minister's intellectual property advisor. 

LONDON – Google must do more ‎to curb online piracy and should take a leadership role in the battle against it in the U.K., an advisor of the British prime minister says in a new report.

‎ 
David Cameron's intellectual property tsar Mike Weatherly in it made recommendations for how search engines, Google in particular, should help tackle piracy in the U.K., which he highlighted costs Britain's music and film industries more than $ million (£400 million) a year.
‎
The Guardian reported that the recommendations include the blocking of advertising that supports pirate sites and the education of consumers with the help of "warning marks" that guide people to legitimate content services.

The report highlights that search giants inadvertently lead consumers to pirated content.
"Search engines can – and must – use the resources available to them in order to safeguard the U.K."s creative industries," the Guardian quoted Weatherley as saying. "Piracy remains the biggest threat to the growth of digital commerce. If we want the U.K. to continue to be a leader in creativity and innovation, the U.K. must also be an international leader of intellectual property rights protection."

In the report, he also concludes: "As the main provider of search facilities in the U.K., it is widely felt that Google should take the lead in setting responsible industry standards for search."

But he also acknowledged that no single player can solve the piracy problem, saying it was "inaccurate, unrealistic and a diversion" to focus on Google and search engines such as Microsoft's Bing ‎and Yahoo as the only solution.

A Google spokesman said that the Internet giant invests much in anti-piracy measures. "Google is committed to tackling piracy, and our action is industry-leading," he said. "We invest tens of millions of pounds in technology to tackle piracy, and last month alone we removed more than 23 million links to infringing content."

Viacom's India Partner Network18 Acquired by Reliance Industries

Getty Images

Mukesh Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Industries Ltd.

India's richest tycoon Mukesh Ambani –- older brother of Anil Ambani, who runs DreamWorks' financial backer Reliance ADAG -- has picked up the diversified media group for $680 million.

Viacom's Indian partner, Network18, has been acquired by Reliance Industries Ltd for $680 million (40 billion rupees) via its affiliate Independent Media Trust. Diversified broadcasting and media entity Network18 and Viacom run equal joint venture Viacom18, whose broadcasting interests here include MTV India, Vh1 India, Comedy Central, Nick India and flagship Hindi entertainment channel Colors, among others. The joint venture's film banner Viacom18 Motion Pictures has had a string of hits in recent years, including sports biopic Bhaag Milkha Bhaag and edgy fare like Gangs of Wasseypur.

Network18 also has a joint venture with CNN for news outlet CNN-IBN and is partners with Comcast Corp. to run CNBC-TV18. The group's publishing division includes the Indian edition of Forbes magazine, while its digital affiliate runs an array of web portals and services.

With annual revenues in excess of $66 billion and headed by India's richest tycoon, Mukesh Ambani, Mumbai-based RIL's varied interests include petroleum, energy, textiles, retail and telecom. Following a split of the Reliance empire founded by their late father Dhirubhai Ambani, Mukesh's younger brother Anil Ambani runs his own telecom-to-entertainment Reliance ADAG conglom, which is DreamWorks' partner and financier.

The Network18 acquisition is seen as a move by RIL to gain wide-ranging content for its upcoming 4G telecom network, in which the group has reportedly invested $11 billion to target India's 890 million mobile users, the second largest in the world after China.

“This acquisition will differentiate Reliance's 4G business by providing a unique amalgamation at the intersect of telecom, web and digital commerce via a suite of premier digital properties,” RIL said in a statement Thursday announcing the acquisition while signaling its return in the telecom space following a split of the Reliance empire a decade ago.

RIL's Independent Media Trust will control 73.1 percent of Network 18 Media & Investments Ltd. (NETM) and 55 percent of TV18 Broadcast Ltd. (TV18), the company said in a filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange. RIL will also make an open offer for shares of Network 18 at 41.04 rupees each, totaling about 9.44 billion rupees, the company added. Network18 shares jumped about 17 percent in early trading Friday.

Network18 was co-founded by its current chairman and TV presenter Raghav Bahl in the early 1990s in New Delhi as a television content producer before launching its own networks. In recent years, the Mumbai-headquartered group was reportedly looking for funding, given it was facing a cash crunch as reflected in its financial results: For the quarter ending 31 March, Network18 posted a $3.3 million (195.7 million rupee) loss, which had widened from a loss of 159.6 million rupees in the same period a year earlier.

RIL's buyout of Network18 happened in stages starting in 2012 by partly funding -- for an undisclosed amount -- the media group's acquisition of a South Indian regional network.

Meanwhile, the RIL acquisition has apparently sparked a management restructuring with reports suggesting some senior executives have resigned from Network18, including the group's long-time CEO B. Sai Kumar and chief financial officer R.D.S Bawa. Unconfirmed rumors suggest more heads may roll, which could include high-profile TV journalist and CNN-IBN editor Rajdeep Sardesai, who has a minority stake in the news network.

Network18 announced Friday that Bahl and his wife Ritu Kapur have exited their shareholding in the company. “We are delighted to welcome Mukesh Ambani and RIL as the potential owners of Network18,” said a joint statement from the couple to employees. “Believe us, the group is in terrific hands. Ambani is a visionary and truly good human being. And we have no doubt that Network18 would soar into the “cloud” under this dispensation. All of you have very good cause to be excited and optimistic about the future."

'Godzilla': How the Filmmakers Created the Iconic Creature and a Fully CG San Francisco

Godzilla was inspired by bears, Komodo dragons, lizards, lions and wolves, says MPC VFX supervisor Guillaume Rocheron. 

Warner Bros.

Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla — which has now brought in $323.4 million worldwide — involved some highly skilled work in bringing the monster to life, led by the film's VFX supervisor Jim Rygiel, who won Oscar for all each film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Translating Godzilla from concept artwork to a photoreal CG creature took lead VFX house Moving Picture Company's artists seven months — from the underlying bones, fat and muscle structure to the thickness and texture of his scales. “There is a lot of legacy from the original movie. For us, it was a unique opportunity not only to create this iconic creature but to tell the story,” said MPC VFX supervisor Guillaume Rocheron, who won an Academy Award in 2013 as part of the Life of Pi VFX team.

To create the 350-foot Godzilla, the VFX team started by studying animals including bears, Komodo dragons, lizards, lions and wolves, “watching what they do when they are attacking or scared.” The creature was given the movements with keyframe animation, meaning that it was animated by hand and without performance capture reference.

Another sizable challenge for MPC was the fact that Godzilla was shot in incentive-friendly Vancouver, while the climatic third act of the film occurs in the highly recognizable city of San Francisco.

MPC created a completely digital version of the downtown area, giving the filmmakers control to allow the creature to interact with the environment. “The entire bay, the water, the Golden Gate Bridge, all the boats are also CG created,” Rocheron said.
 
This work also meant ensuring that Godzilla was the right scale whether the virtual camera was placed on the ground or on the roof of a building.

Destruction effects were also used as an element to remind the viewer of the scale of the monsters in addition to showing spectacle. This involved some high-resolution simulations of buildings collapsing and swirling interactive dust.

MPC’s in-house destruction simulation tool, Kali, was upgraded for the project. The software team added new tools to Kali for postprocessing as well as performance, to allow faster simulation and rendering.

20th Century Fox Reveals Name, Plans for Malaysian Theme Park

Fox Consumer Products & Resort World Genting

An overhead view of the plans for Twentieth Century Fox World in Malaysia.

The $300-million park, due to open in 2016, will be the company's first in the world, featuring rides based on "Ice Age," "Alien vs. Predator," "Night at the Museum" and others.

Twentieth Century Fox on Tuesday unveiled the name and some new details of its planned $300-million theme park in Malaysia, the company's first such project in the world.

At a press conference attended by the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib bin Tun Razak, executives from Fox and Malaysian partner Genting Malaysia said that the upcoming theme park, Twentieth Century Fox World, will comprise 25 rides and attractions -- from media-based rides, thrill rides, dark rides, to children’s rides and water attractions. It will spread over 25 acres at the Resorts World Genting, a casino, hotel and amusement park complex located about an hour outside Kuala Lumpur.

“The creation of a world-class entertainment destination in a vital market like Asia is a landmark step in Fox’s global theme park strategy, extending our brand and engaging audiences in new and exciting ways,” said Greg Lombardo, vp global location based entertainment at Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products.

Rides and attractions at the park will be based on 20th Century Fox blockbuster titles, including Ice Age, Rio, Alien vs. Predator, Planet of the Apes and Night at the Museum, among others to be announced at a later date.

“The opening of the first Twentieth Century Fox Theme Park at Resorts World Genting takes our rich history of storytelling to a whole new level and will provide an exceptional entertainment experience,” said Jeffrey Godsick, president of Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products. “People from around the world will gather here in Malaysia to become part of the story and to experience the magic and adventure of their favorite Fox properties.”

Fox's partner in the venture, Genting Malaysia, is one of the country's top leisure and hospitality corporations, listed on Bursa Malaysia with approximately $7.7 billion in market capitalization. The company is investing $300 million in Twentieth Century Fox World as an addition to its Resorts World Genting destination, which is home to Malaysia's only casino and has been in operation for the past 35 years.

Genting also owns and operates Resorts World Casino New York City, Resorts World Bimini and casinos in the U.K.

Gambling is technically illegal in Muslim-majority Malaysia, but the country allows non-Muslims and international visitors to bet at the Genting casino, on horse racing and in the national lottery.

"Having the distinction of being the first of its kind in the world, Twentieth Century Fox World will be built on a grand scale that consists of unique and creative concepts featuring more than 25 rides and attractions of a cinematic nature," said chairman and chief executive of Genting Malaysia, Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay. "The theme park will definitely pave the way for continued growth of Resorts World Genting with a next-level family entertainment experience which will attract tourism dollars to Malaysia.”

The two companies said the park will target families and adults. They aim to lure in strong numbers from both within Malaysia and across Southeast Asia and China, as tourism numbers in the region continue to climb.
While Twentieth Century Fox World is under construction, Resorts World Genting also is undergoing a full refurbishment and upgrade. The resort and theme park are scheduled to co-launch in 2016.