Leonardo Dicaprio

QUOTE OF THE DAY A lot of the people who practice paganism aren't terribly public about it. We jokingly say they're in the broom closet." Sherry Marts, Open Hearth Foundation board member Article, PG 3B Up next Monday Rock class The Baltimore School of Rock tries to turn wannabe musicians into budding rock stars. IN TODAY Wednesday Coffee hour At Dukem Restaurant, 50 to 60 people show up each Sunday afternoon for an aromatic, Old World ritual: the Ethiopian coffee ceremony. IN TASTE Friday Gangsters The Departed, a film by Martin Scorsese, tells the story of two moles within Massachusetts law enforcement and the Irish mafia.

"I see hearing students as part of the tradition here. We always want to be on the cutting edge." Superintendent James Tucker, Maryland School for the Deaf (Article pg 1A) Readers have sent us their best recipes for cookies with sugar and spice - and we've picked our favorites. in taste Thursday Tree hunt Don't be a Charlie Brown. We'll tell you where to find the perfect Christmas tree. A roundup of tree farms. in live! Friday Diamond hunt Leonardo DiCaprio plays a South African mercenary searching for a rare pink diamond in Blood Diamond.

Blood Diamond, an adventure film centering on the practice of using the trade in precious stones to fund murder and other violence in certain African countries, has the unenviable job of serving two masters. It has to be exciting, but not so much that its message is lost. It has to be moralistic without being preachy. For much of the movie's length, director Edward Zwick and screenwriter Charles Leavitt (K-PAX) strike a good balance. It's only in what amounts to the film's epilogue, when things get wrapped up far too tidily, that things fall out of whack.

The United States will celebrate Earth Day on Saturday, and who better to have as host of the Earth Day 2000 celebration on the Mall in Washington, than "the King of the World" himself, Leonardo DiCaprio. The day includes a concert featuring James Taylor, Carole King and Clint Black. The Environmental Defense Council site at www. environmentaldefense.org provides more details of the celebration and considerable information about significant ways the environmentally conscious among us can make a difference -- including links to such online initiatives as Scorecard (www.

Set in the lower depths and shiny high-rises of a Boston where the church lacks the moral stature to control bingo, The Departed tells a tale of the bad luck of the Irish with black humor, zest and cumulative kapow that take off the top of your head. With The Departed, Martin Scorsese and his screenwriter, William Monahan, have turned the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs into a low-down and majestic cops-and-crooks epic. Far better than Mystic River, it brings to the screen the compass-less Beantown of deteriorating parishes and drifting good-bad guys.

Tomorrow A Secret: (Strand Releasing) A 15-year-old boy unearths a shocking family secret. With Cecile De France, Patrick Bruel and Ludivine Sagnier. Next Friday Bride Wars : (20th Century Fox) Childhood best friends plan their weddings, each at New York's ultimate bridal destination, the Plaza Hotel. But a clerical error and clash in wedding dates pit the two brides against each other in a competition that quickly escalates into all-out war. With Kate Hudson, Anne Hathaway and Candice Bergen.

Cost of making "Titanic," the most expensive film to date:$200 millionBox-office take in North America: About $337 millionBox-office take abroad: More than $300 millionWeeks the book "James Cameron's Titanic" has beenNo. 1 on New York Times paperback best seller list: 2Number of books about the ship, the movie or leading man Leonardo DiCaprio in print or soon to hit bookstores: 7Number of filmgoers seeing"Titanic" who have seen it before: at least 1 in 5Number of years it has been since a mostly instrumental soundtrack made it to No. 1 on the Billboard album chart: 16Time it took the Titanic to sink: 2 hours, 40 minutesTime it takes to watch "Titanic": 3 hours, 15 minutesNumber of members in theTitanic Historical Society of Massachusetts: 5,000Number of extras on the "Titanic" set: 300Selling price in J. Peterman catalog for Kate Winslet's "Titanic" evening gown: $11,500Cost for first-class ticket on the Titanic: $136Cost for one-way ticket on the Concorde: $5,196

About 150 people celebrated a dream come true for a Phoenix girl at the third annual Make-A-Wish Star Ball. Last summer, the mid-Atlantic chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation arranged for Whitney Newland, who is fighting leukemia, to fly to California to meet the man of her dreams, mega-movie star Leonardo DiCaprio.At the Greenspring Valley Hunt Club gala, the 8-year-old guest of honor danced and dined the night away, as did many in the grown-up set, which included Bill Tartikoff, chairman of the foundation's board; Debra Greenblatt, president of Wish Friends Inc.; event chair Carol Lee Miller; committee members Annette Paterakis and Christine Pitcher; Tom Obrecht, president of P.F. Obrecht and Son; Mary Ann Gray, director of Mid Atlantic Venture Association; Exinia Howell, nurse recruiter for CCN Inc.; and Bill Boykin, principal at BT Alex.