Francis Ford Coppola up with fellow Oscar-winning directors Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen for an anthology film called "New York Stories". Coppola directed the "Life Without Zoë" segment, starring his sister Talia Shire and also co-wrote the film with his daughter Sofia Coppola. "Life Without Zoë" was mostly panned by critics and was generally considered the segment that brought the film's overall quality down. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post wrote a particularly scathing review, stating that "It's impossible to know what Francis Coppola's "Life Without Zoë" is. Co-written with his daughter Sofia, the film is a mystifying embarrassment; it's by far the
Vincent Ward (director) epic, "The Last Samurai" was a film inspired by a project developed by Ward. The film was in development for nearly four years and after approaching several directors, including Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Weir, he became executive producer. In the end, the job of director went to Edward Zwick. In 2005 he returns to New Zealand and recovers his more immediate history, that of the bloody British colonization during the second half of the 19th century. All the constants of Ward come back here with greater force, condensed in the "modern" formation of a country with a deep "primitive"