Mel Gibson

It worked with Mike Tyson in "The Hangover. " But can director Todd Phillips make a celebrity cameo uncomfortably funny with a much more recently controversial figure? The New York Post reported Monday that Mel Gibson will play a Bangkok tattoo artist in "The Hangover 2. " Two people close to the production confirmed to The Times that Gibson ? who's maintained public silence since recordings apparently capturing his violent rants against ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva surfaced last summer ?

A decision about whether to prosecute Mel Gibson over allegations of domestic violence is unlikely to be made until authorities finish their probe of an alleged extortion plot targeting the actor. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has completed an investigation into whether the actor hit ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva and turned over its findings to county prosecutors several weeks ago. Sources have told The Times that prosecutors are reviewing that case but are unlikely to move forward until the Sheriff's Department has finished its investigation into claims that Grigorieva or someone close to her was attempting to extort money from Gibson.

The deputy who arrested Mel Gibson in 2006 for drunk driving sued the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department on Tuesday, alleging that it retaliated against him because he resisted requests from superiors to remove the actor's anti-Semitic slurs from an initial arrest report. Deputy James Mee said that in the four years since the incident, he has been passed over for promotions and had his job performance unfairly scrutinized. Because the deputy is Jewish, his attorneys said, he was unfairly suspected of leaking details of Gibson's tirade to the media.

David Perel's celebrity news and gossip website, RadarOnline.com, was so overrun with Internet traffic Friday morning that it temporarily crashed. "It was the longest 20 minutes of my life. The tech people were telling me not to pull my own Mel Gibson," joked Perel, the site's executive vice president. He was, of course, referring to Gibson's angry language in a series of audio tapes released by Radar, in which the actor loudly berates his former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva and spews racial slurs.

An audio recording of Mel Gibson allegedly hurling profanities and making threats to his ex-girlfriend has been generating headlines all week. But there is much debate among legal experts about whether the recording would be allowed in any criminal prosecution of the actor-director. In the recording released this week by the celebrity news website RadarOnline, the "Lethal Weapon" star is purportedly heard admitting to an assault, telling Russian model and former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva that she "deserved" to be hit. Los Angeles County sheriff's officials are conducting a domestic violence investigation into allegations that Gibson harmed Grigorieva during an alleged confrontation in January.

Maxfield Parrish's famous 1922 "Daybreak" sold for $5.2 million Thursday at Christie's International in New York. The sellers were actor Mel Gibson and his wife, Robyn, who filed for divorce last year. The buyer was not identified. The price was well below the $7.6 million that Robyn Gibson paid at Christie's in 2006. At the time, the price established an auction record for Parrish. "The Parrish market is very small," said dealer Betty Krulik, standing near the front of the Christie's Rockefeller Center salesroom.

Legion Sony, $28.95; Blu-ray, $34.95 Angels descend upon the Earth — and not in a "joy to the world" kind of way — in "Legion," an apocalyptic action-horror movie that imagines what might happen if God were to get fed up with mankind. The story is largely confined to a New Mexico diner where a mix of locals and tourists tries to stave off the end of the world, with the help of one rogue angel (played by Paul Bettany). "Legion" has a strong setup — including one classic scene with a demonic old lady, and another featuring a freakishly spindly ice cream man — but the limited location and relentless grimness become a little wearing by the movie's second hour.

Mel Gibson still has his fans, but after a long and controversial absence from the big screen, his overall appeal seems to have faded. The thriller "Edge of Darkness," which marked Gibson's first lead role since 2002's "Signs," opened to a fine but not fantastic $17.1 million from Friday through Sunday in the U.S. and Canada, according to an estimate from distributor Warner Bros. It easily outperformed Walt Disney Studios' romantic comedy "When in Rome," the weekend's other new movie, but "Avatar," with $30 million, held the No. 1 spot for the seventh weekend in a row. Opening-weekend ticket sales for "Edge of Darkness" were the lowest for any movie starring Gibson since 1995's "Braveheart," despite ongoing increases in ticket prices.

A balanced view of Mel Gibson Thanks for the ecumenical piece on Mel Gibson and the upcoming film "Edge of Darkness" ["The Shadow in His Smile" by Geoff Boucher, Jan. 24]. It was refreshing to read an article that reflected on the totality of Gibson's career rather than focusing entirely on the nadir of his drunk driving arrest. Tabloid baggage aside, Gibson remains a truly protean force in the world of film, and I think you captured that enigmatic quality that is elusive to most journalists.

Moviegoers off to see the new Mel Gibson movie "Edge of Darkness," a compressed two-hour version of the six-hour 1985 British TV miniseries, are likely to be doing so because their man Mel is back on the edge, on the boil and on the trigger after nearly eight years off as a top-lined screen actor. ("Signs" was his most recent starring role.) But other factors work in this conflicted but entertaining thriller's favor. Among them: Ray Winstone as assassin-fixer-philosopher of mysterious employ, who quietly becomes the most intriguing character, and co-writer William Monahan's fabulous way with vaguely threatening doublespeak.