‘On the Wings of Song,’ a concert to benefit the Cure FD Foundation, which is helping hundreds of children who are suffering from FD (Familial Dysautonomia), will be held on Sunday, April 25 from 3 to 6 p.m. at Leo Baeck Temple, 1300 Sepulveda, directly across from the entrance to the Getty Center. A silent auction will precede the family concert showcasing the musical talents of Los Angeles rabbis and cantors from five different congregations, emceed by television host Mark Wahlberg, in a program of jazz, Broadway, Israeli and folk songs. The stars of the show will include Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben of Kehillat Israel; Rabbis Morley T. Feinstein and Zach Shapiro and Cantor Jay Frailich of University Synagogue; Rabbi Ken Chasen and Cantor Wally Schachet-Briskin of Leo Baeck Temple. Last spring, 38-year Palisades residents Mavis and Al Feinberg, whose 6-year-old grandson has FD, started the Cure FD Foundation, to help children suffering from this neurological, degenerative genetic disease which affect Ashkenazic Jews. The organization has several Palisadian board members, including Irwin Feinberg (one of the Feinbergs’ four children, all of whom are PaliHi graduates), Judy Silk, Stephanie Blackman and Amy Madnick. The disease is currently fatal, and is as common as Tay Sachs disease once was. It can appear from out of nowhere after generations that were untouched by FD. One in 27 people of Eastern or Central European Jewish descent carries the recessive gene that causes the disorder. A newborn baby with FD must live daily with life-threatening conditions affecting the heart, lungs, autonomic and sensory nervous systems, ability to swallow, suck, eat and speak, but not intelligence. However, research now being pursued at the Lab for Familial Dysautonomia Research at Fordham University, under the direction of Dr. Berish Rubin, has already achieved two breakthroughs, so that the children with FD are now improved in their stamina and heart function, and have fewer crises. Rubin believes that, with adequate funding, in five years these children will no longer die of FD and will lead nearly normal lives. Last summer, Rubin discovered two natural compounds, tocotrienols and green tea, which, when ingested together by the children with FD, cause an increase in the amount of the IKAP protein that is lacking in these children and is critical for normal functioning of the neurological system. Rubin noted in a recent interview, ‘The positive effect that the tocotrienols and the green tea are having on children with FD has been incredible. Children who were confined to wheelchairs are now walking. Children who never had tears are now capable of crying. Children who were in crisis for week-long periods are now crisis-free. ‘We are expecting that the taking of these supplements will result in an increased life-span for the children,’ Rubin continued. ‘Our hope is that as we continue to gain new information about how to control IKAP levels we will be able to continue to positively impact the lives of those with FD.’ Blood tests are now available for parents to see if they are carriers. Both parents must be carriers for a child to get the illness. This is the founation’s third fundraiser on behalf of Dr. Rubin’s research. The silent auction preceding the concert will features items such as Correia art glass and studio tour, hotel and cruise vacations, a cooking class with a professional chef, and special sports memorabilia. Tickets are $54 per adult and $18 per child or full-time student (under 3 years, free). Contact: Cure FD Foundation office at 459-1056 or info@curefd.org

By Arnie Wishnick

DOGVILLE He directed your favorite movie of all time, ‘Breaking the Waves.’ (I’m only kidding. Is there anyone out there who liked ‘Breaking the Waves’?) Now Denmark’s Lars von Trier is back with the very controversial ‘Dogville.’ For those looking for something different, Mr. Von Trier has made a movie especially for you. Set on a bare sound stage that looks like a Monopoly board with a minimum of everything, the movie takes place in the early 1930s in a small town in the Rocky Mountains. We meet the townsfolk described in book form containing nine chapters and narrated by John Hurt. Into their drab lives comes the beautiful and mysterious Grace (Nicole Kidman) on the lam from someone called The Big Man (James Caan). Who is she? Is she a runaway from home? Is she a fugitive from justice? And what about the film’s very significant religious overtones? Tom (Paul Bettany) persuades the others to hide Grace. They agree but only in exchange for her labor. All goes well until a reward is posted for her capture. The townsfolk (among them Lauren Bacall, Ben Gazzara, Chloe Segivny and Patricia Clarkson) turn on Grace by beating and raping her. The length of the film, three hours, will try your patience. When Chapter Nine was flashed on the screen with the notation that the film will soon end, the audience exploded in applause. Critics have called the film anti-American. I never saw that. I only saw anti-humanism. Out of 5 Palm Trees, ‘Dogville’ gets 4 Palm Trees. THE PRINCE AND ME Paige (the always solid Julia Stiles) is a serious pre-med student at the University of Wisconsin. Coming to America with his valet is Edward, the Prince of Denmark (Luke Mably). The playboy/prince knows exactly where he wants to study after seeing a video called ‘Girls Gone Wild in Wisconsin.’ The king and queen (James Fox and Miranda Richardson) seem happy to get rid of him. You can probably tell me the rest of the plot. Yes, they meet. Yes, there’s no attraction at first; then they fall in love. Then, Edward asks her to return with him to Denmark to be his princess. Aha! This is where it gets serious. Does she stay or does she return to America? For the answer you’ll have to pay to see it. This nice movie, which all but falls apart in the end, does have a first-ever: a genuine Wisconsin lawnmower race. While Dad is seeing ‘Walking Tall’ starring The Rock in another theater at the cineplex, pre-teen girls, teenage girls and their mothers will see ‘The Prince and Me’ and love it. Out of 5 Palm Trees, ‘The Prince and Me’ gets 3-1/2 Palm Trees.

Palisades AARP members and friends will take a bus trip on Wednesday, April 21 to Lotusland, the 37-acre Montecito estate considered by many the most singular and beautiful garden in Southern California. Lotusland was designed by Ganna Walska, a woman who was passionate: for fashion’her gorgeous opera gowns are on display through April 4 in the Ert’ exhibition at LACMA; for plants’ she spent 40 years developing her garden in between singing in operas here and abroad; and for men’she married and divorced six husbands. Walska owned the property, which she originally named Tibetland, from 1941 until her death in 1984. Married at the time to her sixth and last husband, Theos Bernard, she purchased the estate intending first to use it as a retreat for Tibetan monks. The Tibetan monks never appeared and sometime later, after divorcing Bernard, she changed the name of her estate to ‘Lotusland’ in honor of the sacred Indian lotus growing in one of the ponds on the property. She thus began what would be a gradual transformation from well-known socialite to garden designer. Most of her energy and resources were poured into creating a botanical garden of rare plants using her natural artistic talents to create a fantasy world of exquisite beauty. To accomplish this, she worked with a number of landscape architects and designers, including Lockwood de Forest, Jr., Ralph T. Stevens, William Paylen, Oswald da Ros and Charles Glass. Walska herself was a designer and loved to mass single species of plants together. She wanted the best, the biggest and the most unusual plants available and was often willing to pay any price to get them. So determined was she to finish the work she had begun that in the 1970s, she auctioned off some of her jewelry in order to finance her final creation’the cycad garden. Hear more about this extraordinary woman during a 90-minute docent-led tour of her garden, a featured component of the tour. To register for the trip, mail a check for $40, made payable to Pacific Palisades AARP, and send to Mary Cole, 639 Radcliffe, Pacific Palisades 90272. Lunch at the Big Yellow House is included.

In 1984, Weston Naef boarded a 747 in New York accompanied by his dog and 50 crates filled with the most outstanding photographs ever assembled. As the Getty Museum’s newly appointed curator of photographs, Naef was shepherding to Los Angeles the museum’s recently purchased bounty, photographs obtained through the simultaneous acquisition of several major American and European collections. Thus began the legacy of the Getty’s foray into photography, a bold stroke that instantly transformed Los Angeles into one of the leading centers of the art form. Prior to this visionary move, the Getty was known mostly for its collections of Greek and Roman antiquities,18th-century French decorative arts and European paintings. Naef, today still at the helm as curator, organized the current ‘Photographers of Genius,’ exhibition, a major show marking the 20th anniversary of the Getty’s formidable photography collection. The exhibition spotlights the genius of 38 photographers, with three images chosen to represent each, all selected from among 600 photographers of which the museum has significant holdings. (Twenty-five or more prints by an individual artist is considered a strong holding.) Of no surprise is the inclusion of such groundbreaking artists as Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Stieglitz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange and Diane Arbus. Eye-opening, even to aficionados, are such ‘new’ names as Anna Atkins, Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey and Camille Silvy. Naef’s vision and curatorship was put to the test to winnow his list from such vast holdings, but with ironclad criteria, the task became less difficult. First, every photographer had to be held in-depth at the Getty, with an equal balance between quality and quantity. ‘For instance, Ansel Adams is not among the 38, since we only have one print that is definitive,’ explains Naef, a longtime Palisadian. The photographers all had to be ahead of their time risk-takers, too, and each needed to exercise influence beyond his or her own time. The influence factor, something impossible to measure among contemporary photographers, explains why the exhibition stops in the 1960s with Diane Arbus. The only living photographer represented in the show is Cartier-Bresson (born in 1908), and the oldest photographs go back to the medium’s infancy in the 1840s. Among them is Hippolyte Bayard’s ‘Arrangement of Specimens,’ an 1842 cameraless photogram using the technique known as cyanotype to record flowers, plants, textiles and feathers. The process, based on the light-sensitivity of certain iron salts, displays an arresting and characteristic bright blue color. Other explorations of Bayard’s, including many portraits and self-portraits, are described by Naef as among the ‘first to introduce a first-person voice. Bayard used photography to explain himself rather than the outside world.’ In Naef’s view, another overlooked pioneer is Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, whom he credits as the first to ‘apply the most essential options that are available in photography: point of view, light and choice of subject.’ Naef feels certain Girault de Prangey will equal Daguerre in the realm of photo history. ‘He did something earthshaking and important by photographing the Parthenon,’ Naef says. Not just simple recordings, his pictures of ancient monuments employ photography as a creative tool. His 1842 ‘Rome, So-Called Temple of Vesta’ image takes the radical perspective of exposing just the top half of the columned temple. Gustave Le Gray’s ‘Seascape with a Ship Leaving Port’ of 1857 foreshadows the Impressionists, who undoubtedly saw in his work the dramatic play of light and atmosphere they later sought to capture in their paintings. Another compelling image in the show is Camille Silvy’s ‘Twilight’ (1859-60), a photograph filled with interesting deception. ‘He’s the first person to believe that photographs should be works of fiction,’ Naef says. ‘It’s a work that appears to use a pure means of photography, but instead is an elaborate fiction.’ The photograph, artfully showing a figure disappearing in the background fog and a boy leaning on a lamppost, is actually a skillful manipulation spliced together using four different negatives. Roger Fenton’s ‘The Billiard Room, Mentmore House’ (1858) offers a glimpse into a less formal, unstaged world rarely captured in early photography. ‘It powerfully conveys the universal need to have relaxed and carefree moments,’ Naef says. Naef points to two strong threads carried throughout the collection. One is social documentation, vividly displayed in images such as Lewis Hind’s 1910 ‘Sadie Pfeiffer, Spinner in Cotton Mill, North Carolina’ and the iconic work of Dorothea Lange in the 1930s. The other strain is showcased by visionaries such as Moholy-Nagy, whose avant-garde, abstract work convincingly put photography on the same plane as painting in terms of importance. Ultimately, the show’s theme’aside from showcasing genius’highlights how photographs have the power to change us by causing us to look at the world in a new way. ‘Photographs are another way of doing what began with Gutenberg and D’rer as a magical way to communicate ideas visually,’ Naef says. ‘They are the most effective vehicle of communication besides the human voice.’ Through the Getty’s aggressive efforts to collect and show photography, Naef believes a ‘huge number of people have become literate in photography. It has the potential to reach out to audiences of every kind.’ ‘Photographs of Genius At the Getty’ continues through July 25. Contact: 440-7300. On Thursday, April 22, at 7 p.m., Mark Haworth-Booth, curator of photographs, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, will discuss the first ‘Golden Age’ of photography, including works in the exhibition by Gustave Le Gray and Camille Silvy.