Events Run the Gamut From ‘Brazil’ to Edward Albee

* MOVIES: “Some Mother’s Son,” at Edwards South Coast Village 3, Santa Ana, stars Helen Mirren and Fionnula Flanagan as two women who must choose between their dying sons’ principles or their own maternal instincts during the 1981 Irish hunger strikes . . . “Brazil,” Terry Gilliam’s 1985 darkly fantastic triumph, screens for free tonight at 8 at Cappuccino Dova in Cypress. . . . Pure visceral terror keeps you plastered to your seat during “The Relic” (general release) as an unseen creature, born of hormones and witchdoctory, invades a museum in Chicago and starts chewing up its inhabitants. . . . The American Cinematheque’s seventh annual “New Films From Germany” continues tonight and Saturday at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, and the UCLA Film Archive’s “Borderlines: New Canadian Cinema” continues Saturday at UCLA’s Melnitz Theater. . . . F.W. Murnau’s classic “Sunrise” (1927), starring George O’Brien and Janet Gaynor, screens tonight at 8 at the Silent Movie in Hollywood.

* MUSIC: The American String Quartet will play music by Mozart, Bartok and Schubert today at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. Joining the ensemble will be violist Brian Dembrow and cellist Stephen Erdody, members of the Angeles String Quartet. . . . Esa-Pekka Salonen will lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic in works by Mahler and Bartok on Saturday at 8 p.m. at the center. Joan Rodgers will be the soloist in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. The concert is sponsored by the Philharmonic Society.. . . The San Diego Opera’s “Carmen” opens Saturday night at the San Diego Civic Theatre. . . . Sunday afternoon is the last chance to hear Esa-Pekka Salonen’s “LA Variations,” commissioned by and for the L.A. Philharmonic, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. . . . Touring icon Andre Watts fires up his piano Sunday night at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. . . . One of the earliest music theater pieces ever created, “Daniel and the Lions,” will be fully staged at the Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles Saturday afternoon, courtesy of the Ensemble for Early Music and the Da Camera Society.

* DANCE: Using repertory excerpts as the ingredients for what might be called a tossed salad of choreography, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company stages one of its unpredictable full-evening “events” on Saturday at the Alex Theatre in Glendale. . . . The Helios Dance Theater and Blue Palm share a contemporary program tonight and Saturday in the Keck Theater at Occidental College in Eagle Rock.

* POP: Teen pop-R&B; stars Immature headline a concert Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Universal Amphitheatre. . . . KXLU-FM’s “Demolisten” sponsors a show Saturday at 9 p.m. at the Impala in downtown L.A.’s Little Tokyo featuring solo sets from members of such L.A. bands as Sukia, Abe Lincoln Story, Lutefisk and Bobsled.

* JAZZ: Wallace Roney, a trumpeter inspired by Miles Davis, will be joined by pianist Geri Allen at Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood tonight through Sunday.

* ART: “WORK/SPACE: Visual Relations Incorporate” (through Feb. 8) transforms the UC Irvine Art Gallery into a warren of office cubicles for secretarial and clerical staff. The group show offers humorous and pointed commentary on the lives of artists who stay afloat by working temp jobs. . . . At 72, Robert Rauschenberg hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down, but his exhibitions in Los Angeles certainly have been rare. Don’t miss a chance to see the noted American artist’s first L.A. show in many years: “Robert Rauschenberg: Anagrams,” a new suite of vegetable-dye transfers, closing Saturday at the PaceWildenstein Gallery in Beverly Hills.

* THEATER: Cheap seats this weekend, or at least less expensive ones, are available with the start of previews of Edward Albee’s “A Delicate Balance,” which is being revived at the Alternative Repertory Theatre in Santa Ana. This 1966 drama involves a husband and wife who discover the fine line between madness and sanity. . . . Michael Caldwell and Rachel Winfree portray 20 small-town eccentrics indelibly in “Our Wedding,” their funny and poignant satire set behind the scenes at nuptials in Texas, at Theatre/Theater in Hollywood on Saturday afternoons at 3. . . . For a double treat, Theatre/Theater’s rowdy and good-natured late-night offering “ManCard” is a hilarious bill of satiric skits about post-collegiate, macho male-bonding in the ‘90s, performed by Jesse Dienstag and Kirk Pynchon on Fridays and Saturdays at 10:45 p.m.

* FAMILIES: Catch figure-skating champions in “Walt Disney’s World on Ice” as they glide and spin through such Disney classics as “The Little Mermaid,” “The Jungle Book,” “Cinderella” and “101 Dalmatians,” today, Saturday and Sunday at the Long Beach Convention Center. . . . Light up your life with “Lazer Vaudeville,” a touring extravaganza full of lasers, black lights, juggling, rope-spinning, acrobatics and slapstick tonight at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts, Saturday at the Haugh Performing Arts Center in Glendora and twice on Sunday at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts.