Today’s entertainment picks:

Today’s entertainment picks:

v Candllelight Christmas concert, 7:30 p.m.: Performance by the Mercer Country Historical Society Chamber Players at Helen Black Miller Memorial Chapel, 119 S. Pitt St., Mercer, Pa.; 724-662-3490.

v “Mideast. Midwest. Middle Class”: A modern art installation by Jake Marsico of Pittsburgh that examines the interconnectedness of current events. Butler Institute of American Art, 524 Wick Ave., Youngstown; 330-743-1711.

v “Memories of Christmas Past”: An exhibition of vintage decorations in the rooms of the Arms Museum, 648 Wick Ave., Youngstown; 330-743-2589.

v Youngstown’s Total Package Band, 9 p.m.: Dance music at Club Amauri, 3807 Belmont Ave., Liberty; 330-759-3699.

v Uptown Cats, 9 p.m.: One of northeast Ohio’s top bands at The Fireplace, 2075 E. Western Reserve Road, Poland; 330-757-4043.

Hollywood dialect coach Easton dies

LOS ANGELES

Character actor and Hollywood dialect coach Robert Easton, whose successes include teaching Forest Whitaker to speak like Idi Amin in the 2006 movie “The Last King of Scotland,” has died in Los Angeles. He was 81.

Daughter Heather Woodruff Perry tells the Los Angeles Times that Easton died of natural causes Monday.

When he was younger, he mainly played country bumpkins on TV shows because of his Southern drawl. He feared being typecast so he worked on different accents and learned he could mimic regional speech patterns.

George Michael is out of hospital

VIENNA

Austria’s state broadcaster says British pop star George Michael has been released from a Vienna hospital and will be able to celebrate Christmas at home.

The 48-year-old was being treated for pneumonia. Broadcaster ORF says he was released Thursday morning from the AKH hospital and is catching a flight to London later in the day.

The former front man for the pop group “Wham” was hospitalized late last month after canceling a performance in the Austrian capital.

Kid Rock, church donate to needy

DETROIT

Kid Rock is teaming up with a Detroit church to give away hundreds of gift baskets and retail gift certificates to needy families in the area where he got his start and still calls home.

The musician’s nonprofit organization joined Hartford Memorial Baptist Church on Wednesday to distribute 100 gift certificates for Meijer retail and grocery stores, along with more than 300 gift baskets.

Kid Rock and the Kid Rock Foundation have been honored this year for their philanthropy by Goodfellows Detroit and the NAACP.