Mariah Carey, Rosario Dawson, Wyclef Jean and Ashton Kutcher are participating in the second annual TeenNick Halo Awards, the network told TVGuide.com.

The show will recognize four teens for their philanthropic leadership in their respective communities. Each honoree recently was treated to a surprise visit from host and executive producer Nick Cannon and will receive a grant from the Entertainment Industry Foundation.

The winners and matched celebs:

Herold Charles, 18, of Miami, moved to Haiti five years ago, and after last year’s devastating earthquake, he dedicated his time to help 25 families in the U.S. locate their loved ones. His match: Jean, who provides scholarships to Haitian children through his Yéle Haiti Foundation.

Joshua Hall, 17, of New York, became an advocate to eradicate child slavery. He’s been paired with Kutcher, who started the DNA Foundation to raise awareness about child sex slavery.

Jordan Somer, 16, of Papillion, Neb., created Miss Amazing, a pageant for girls and women aged 5 to 35 with physical and mental disabilities. Her match: Dawson, who’s as a board member of V-Day, a global activist movement to stop violence against women and girls.

Lauren Huichan, 18, of Albuquerque, N.M., who was a troubled foster kid for years before getting her life together. She’s now the president of the youth advocate group Adelante and works with the New Mexico foster care system. She’s been paired with Carey, who works with the Fresh Air Fund, which helps disadvantaged urban youth.

The 2010 Halo Awards air Friday, Dec. 10 at 8/7c, on TeenNick.

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Rosario Dawson discusses how she crafted her character Connie Hooper, a sensible, level-headed woman who is the “yardmaster” in a man’s world of freight trains.

CriticsChoiceMovies is the online destination for interviews with today’s biggest movie stars talking about today’s biggest movies… www.criticschoice.com

TeenHollywood is in Beverly Hills again [we hang there a lot] to chat with the stars of the fast-paced, exciting action flick Unstoppable about a runaway train and the people who risked their lives to stop it! The movie is based on a real life incident in which a train carrying dangerous, toxic chemicals was rushing unmanned through populated areas.

Star Trek’s Chris Pine and the great Denzel Washington play a young conductor on his first real run paired with the way more experienced engineer [actual driver]. The two are on another train which becomes instrumental in the struggle to stop the dangerous runaway choo-choo.

It’s tons of action for the two guys but hot actress Rosario Dawson plays a female “Yard Master”; the woman in charge of routing all the trains in a specific area and she is just as involved as the guys but from a distance.

Talking to the trio, we are getting a lot from Rosario about creating her strong, in charge, yet vulnerable female character and the guys are talking about stunts, how dangerous trains really are and being attacked by cereal! We’ll explain. Read on….

TeenHollywood: It’s amazing how many technical terms go into running a railroad. Rosario, you play a woman who runs a rail yard. How did you learn that “lingo” your character Connie was spouting with ease?

Rosario Dawson: I spent a lot of time talking to the [person we chose to be] the background person for Connie. So we drilled her. She was constantly talking to [director] Tony [Scott] and she talked to me and then we would go over the transcripts. A lot of the time I would ask her, ‘What does this mean? Time off the air-brakes, what does it mean?’ At least I knew what I was talking about, which was really helpful. But also then just the energy behind it. All of it sounds really huge, but she’d be like, ‘No, that’s something pretty simple, don’t emphasize that.’ It was very helpful.

TeenHollywood: Chris and Denzel, what was the most interesting or helpful thing you learned from the real railroad workers that you talked to? And did you actually get to drive a train?

Chris Pine: It was interesting and frightening. I remember when we went to the rail yard in L.A. and they said that the most dangerous place for trains is actually not out on the track, it’s almost in the yard, because the trains can be so quiet and so seemingly innocuous, but of course they’re 1000 ton beasts.

TeenHollywood: That sounds scary!

Chris Pine: I remember this one guy telling the story [about someone who] got surprised on the track in the yard, and the train was only going three or four miles an hour, and it pinned the guy. And then they had to call the family up because the guy was still alive and they said their goodbyes and the train separated from the guy and then the guy passed away. But that’s how dangerous these things are. Pretty much everyone we talked to had an experience, whether it be a conductor or an engineer, with life and death stuff, people trying to cross the tracks and there’s no life emergency stop button on the train. A lot of people experience traumatic events, so there were counselors and stuff like that.

Denzel Washington: It was great to get the drive the train. Everything on them hurts! You step on it, you hit your knee. It was dangerous all the time. I was always more nervous because Chris and I were looking forward and you had all these [people] around on the platform and you’re going fifty miles an hour, so we could see what’s coming and they couldn’t. I couldn’t imagine making this movie on green screen. It wouldn’t have worked. Chris knows real well that you wouldn’t know what getting hit by puffed wheat [felt like]. [Note: a seal breaks on a grain-carrying car and grain pelts poor Chris while he is outside trying to save the train].

Chris Pine: [laughs] [Hit by Sugar Puffs] cereal. ‘And then cue cereal action sequence.’ Who knew that cereal could be such a pain in the ass!? It’s a credit to Tony really too, that everything was practical so we were we on trains, on tracks, moving. We had two trains, one train looked like a train, and another was chopped up so that cab [Denzel and I were in] could be circled by this camera, so that we could run scenes over and over and over again and feel like we were driving the train and not be hindered by worrying about a master shot and [lots of] coverage. We could just run the scene. It was such a freedom and a liberty to be able to do that.

(more…)

Earlier this week, Rosario Dawson was a presenter at the BAFTA Los Angeles 2010 Britannia Awards in Los Angeles. I have just added 86 HQ/MQ photos from the red carpet, show and backstage into our gallery!

Rosario Dawson is scheduled to be a guest on Conan O’Brien’s new talk show, “Conan” this month! Her episode will be airing on Tuesday November 16th on the TBS network! Make sure you check your local TV listings for exact air times in your area.

In Zookeeper, the animals at the Franklin Park Zoo love their kindhearted caretaker, Griffin Keyes (Kevin James). Finding himself more comfortable with a lion than a lady, Griffin decides the only way to get a girl in his life is to leave the zoo and find a more glamorous job. The animals, in a panic, decide to break their time-honored code of silence and reveal their biggest secret: they can talk! To keep Griffin from leaving, they decide to teach him the rules of courtship – animal style. The film also stars Rosario Dawson and Leslie Bibb and features the voices of Cher, Nick Nolte, Adam Sandler, and Sylvester Stallone.

Zookeeper will be released July 8th, 2011!

I went to bed last night thinking about this list, and woke up still thinking about it. It was so difficult for me to whittle it down to 10 songs, none of which I wanted to be obvious choices, and I ended up making it even harder by dividing them into different genres and areas of protest. I work with so many different organizations because so many different people have influenced me—once that spark of activism ignites inside you, it’s very difficult to narrow it down to just one cause. I wanted to craft a collection of songs that show how we’re all grappling with our own existential dilemmas, no matter what type of music we listen to, what part of the world we live in, or what language we speak. As people, we have the insatiable need to communicate and figure out what it all means.

Country Joe and the Fish’s “The Fish Cheer & I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag.” (Folk)
I grew up listening to this old Vietnam War protest song: “Put down your books and pick up a gun, we’re gonna have a whole lotta fun!” When [Country Joe McDonald] played this song at Woodstock, he told the crowd to sing along with him, and it’s so genius because he starts screaming at everybody, like, “There’s 300,000 of you fuckers out there! How do you expect to stop the war if you don’t start screaming better than that?” He sings, “Come on Wall Street, don’t move slow,” which is so perfect, because he’s telling Wall Street, ironically, that we need to supply the army with the tools of the trade. We’re now in the middle of a recession that’s costing us trillions of dollars, and we’re out fighting a war that we’ve known for years now is based on false pretenses. Yet we’re still there, and we’re still entangled with Iran and Pakistan. It’s never-ending. This is my anti-war song, but done in a very Stephen Colbert-like way.

Tori Amos’ “Me and a Gun.” (Singer-songwriter)
This is pretty amazing because Tori Amos is singing about her own rape. It’s about this guy with a gun who pushes her on her belly, and she sings, “It’s kind of funny/ The things you think at times like these/ Like I haven’t seen Barbados/ So I must get out of this.” So many women don’t speak about the violence they’ve endured. It’s not sexy to talk about rape, especially your own. Even after all the years that I’ve been working on the board of V-Day [a campaign to stop violence against women and girls], this song still gives me chills.

Zap Mama’s “Nostalgie Amoureuse.” (R&B)
Zap Mama is from Brussels, and she’s amazing. This song is about a homeless man who speaks to her. I love the line, “We are all winners if we unclose our eyes.” Homelessness is not a conversation we have anymore. We can talk about the “housing crisis”—like the houses give a shit—but that’s a very nice and bookish way of talking about families being kicked out onto the street. Remember all the telethons we used to have with Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal? Where are those telethons for the homeless now?

Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s “Hawai’i ’78.” (World)
This is on his Facing Future album. He sings about the king and queen who used to rule over Hawaii, and how they would feel about their sacred land being covered by highways. There is still a lot of racial tension between the Samoans, the native Hawaiians, the whites, and other people who have moved there. It has become cliché or jokey to so many people who visit the islands there, but those traditional dances and tattoos are such beautiful expressions of a native culture trying desperately to retain its roots.

Syl Johnson’s “Is it Because I’m Black?” (Soul)
This is a beautiful song about race, which is obviously a huge issue in this country. The fact that we still have our own native peoples in segregation is disgusting. They are still on these plots of land that we designated for them hundreds of years ago, and that’s never changed. We never really talk about them as a community. We’re all like, Hey, we’re one world, we’re one mind, we’re all connected, but the reality is that we still have very legal segregation in this country. In this song, Syl Johnson describes all of the things he wants for himself and his life, but can’t achieve, and so he asks, “Is it because of the color of my skin?” After 9/11, Muslims were easy targets, but group prejudice comes in waves. Latinos are now joking, “Ah, it’s our turn!” It happened to the Chinese, it happened to the Japanese, it happened to the Irish, and it happened to the Jews. We have these waves of hate that wash over this country, despite the existence of a symbol like the Statue of Liberty.

Queen Latifah’s “U.N.I.T.Y.” (Rap)
Even though it’s a bit obvious, this song really is just that dope, and I love Queen Latifah. The song is about taking back language, which is something The Vagina Monologues addresses in “Reclaiming Cunt.” When that book first came out, you couldn’t even say “vagina” on national television. Even now, just a couple of weeks ago, I was listening to the radio and they were playing the Eminem song, “The Real Slim Shady.” There’s a line in there about the clitoris, but the word “clitoris” was actually blanked out on the radio. I was like, What? I’m sorry, you can’t say “clitoris” on the radio? Are you kidding me?

Fela Kuti’s “Water No Get Enemy.” (Afrobeat)
When it wasn’t about sex, Fela’s music was mostly about protest. Given the current discussion about the privatization of water, as well as soaring food prices, this is still a very poignant song—probably more so now than it was back then. It’s also joyous and full of expression. V-Day is very much about injecting art and poetry and acting and singing and dancing—all of that great stuff—into the conversation about violence. Without it, that discussion can get too intense. When that happens, you can only preach to the choir because no one else will listen to you.

Saul Williams’ “Not in Our Name.” (Spoken word)
I love when he says, “No more transfusions of blood for oil.” It’s a short, simple song. There are versions with music, but I like it a cappella. The number of different ways we try to reach out to each other, scream our frustrations, and call out for help blows me away. I think Saul Williams captures that rebellious sentiment beautifully and in a really modern way.

Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon.” (Jazz)
This song speaks to our current recession: Why are there more billionaires now than ever before? Why are people making record amounts of money? Why are the people who created this “housing crisis” getting bonuses? And why is my ass on the street right now? I can’t get a job and my kids got kicked out of their school program, and they’re talking about taking away my healthcare. That’s what “Whitey on the Moon” is about. It’s like, “Listen, I’m not just angry in some arbitrary way. These are the facts. A rat bit my black sister and Whitey is on the moon. I’m sorry that those two thoughts are in my head at the same time but that’s just crazy. I’m sitting here looking at my sister getting bit in the face by a rat and I see on the news that some dude is jumping up and down on the moon?”

Los Fabulosos Cadillacs’ “El Matador.” (Ska)
This song is about the military dictatorship that controlled Argentina in the ’70s and early ’80s. Many of the song’s lyrics come from a poem by Chilean activist Victor Jara, who was killed in 1973. Los Fabulosos Cadillacs started making music in Buenos Aires in the early ’80s, when Argentina was in the Falklands War with Britain, and a lot of musicians were literally being thrown in jail for playing ska music because it was considered a British genre. How crazy is that? The beauty of music is that it gives voice to disenfranchised people—whether it’s because you’re poor, or because you’re gay, or because you’re homeless, or because you’re anti-war. Real artists are people who make music that provokes you, that moves you, that forces you to get up off your ass and do something. Once you know something you can’t un-know it—it rings in your head, and it’s impossible to ignore. Plus, it’s way better than hearing something on the news and then forgetting about it as soon as the diarrhea commercial comes on.

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