Indeed, as Bonnie Abaunza, Los Angeles-based director of Amnesty International's celebrity outreach program, points out, the media is covering so-called "conflict diamonds" more now than when Sierra Leone's bloody civil wars were actually taking place. "It's amazing that all this attention is on conflict diamonds when no one has even seen the film yet," she said. Amnesty International is steadily recruiting celebrities in an effort to use the film to focus attention on human rights questions that still surround the diamond industry. For example, Abaunza said, she recently screened "Blood Diamond" for hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons, who works with De Beers on his line of diamond jewelry.

The Kimberley Process came under attack last week when the Government Accounting Office (GAO) recommended that the diamond industry and the U.S. government do more to stop conflict diamonds from entering the U.S. The GAO report acknowledged that the legitimate trade of rough diamonds can help African economies, but it added that rough diamonds remain a major cause for concern. Even the Department of Homeland Security is getting into the act. According to a Reuters report last week, the department released a response to the GAO report, pledging to work with the State Department to record detailed information about diamonds entering this country, as well as conducting periodic random examinations of diamond shipments.

STAR: [Leonardo DiCaprio] was implored for help by Bushmen in Botswana in a full-page Variety ad. "I hope they keep on publicizing the controversies," the actor's publicist says of De Beers' PR efforts.; PHOTOGRAPHER: Jaap Buitendijk Warner Bros.; ON THE RUN: Leonardo DiCaprio, left, and Djimon Hounsou star in the film, set in the late '90s when rebels seized control of Sierra Leone's diamond mines.; PHOTOGRAPHER: Jaap Buitendijk Warner Bros.