For Jennifer Aniston, “The Break-Up follows a terrible professional run. In the last year she has appeared in two high-profile movies — the disappointing thriller Derailed and the stink-bomb comedy Rumor Has It — and the smaller Friends With Money, in which she was the least convincing member of an ensemble. The characters in these films are wildly different, but Ms. Aniston’s performance isn’t. She projects the same high-maintenance Jennifer Aniston style — the trademark sleek hair, the natural-looking makeup, the body so toned you wonder how many hours a day a person can spend with a trainer. [Plus] she exudes coolness and self-possession even when the part calls for warmth or vulnerability. She did warm and vulnerable winningly in the cult movie Office Space (1999). But lately all her characters uncomfortably resemble the one who made her rich and famous, the feather-brained Rachel on Friends, who thought being pretty was her full-time job. It’s as if she has substituted a movie-star pose for acting.” — Caryn James on Aniston’s career slump in the 6.5.05 N.Y. Times.

Sofia Coppola‘s Marie-Antoinette “may also be [her] most personal film to date, not because she is herself the scion of a royal Hollywood family, but rather because she came of age during her father’s lean years, when the palace of Zoetrope was set upon by angry creditors and King Francis was forced into working as a director-for-hire just to pay the bills. This is a movie made by someone who knows firsthand what it means to watch a once-glorious empire crumble .” — L.A. Weekly critic Scott Foundas in his sum-up piece on the Cannes Film Festival.

Spring Street and Crosby, looking west — Monday, 6.4.06, 11:50 am.

(a) Straight up Crosby, facing north — Monday, 6.4.06, 11:52 am; (b) Spring Street facing east — Monday, 6.4.06, 11:55 am; (c) This Starbucks (Spring & Crosby) has an especially friendly, unforced, study-hall vibe, on tyop of the wi-fi and that Wild Orange tea.

I’m sitting at a small round table at a Starbucks at the corner of Crosby and Spring Streets, and I feel icky and look like hell but I don’t care because I’m not feeling quite as sick and submerged as I have since Saturday night, which was when a Paris virus invaded my blood. Constant fatigue, nausea, fever, aching muscles, weakness, sweat-sleeping …awful.

After a second night of ache and torment at my brother’s place last night (i.e., Sunday), the damn virus seems to be losing steam. I tried plugging in this morning at 4 ayem (I’m on Paris time, naturally) but the new AC adapter I bought in Paris suddenly wasn’t working, so I shlepped back to Manhattan on the 7:23 out of Norwalk and found an electronics store on Fifth Ave. and 39th. A pale-faced, yarmulke-wearing salesman took a look at my Paris-bought adapter (which cost me 80 Euros) and determined that only half of it wasn’t working, and he sold me a plug-in that fixed everything for only $10. On a plane back to LA at 4:45 today…