Film Fact: Ireland

To celebrate the weird and wonderful Eurovision Song Contest, we present weird and wonderful film facts about this year's finalist countries.

What did ever happen to that self-proclaimed Lord of the Dance, Michael Flatley? In 2011, the Chicago native (“…born and raised in the United States, he often visited family in Ireland,” says his website bio) got some less than favourable reviews for his last roll of the Riverdance dice, a 3D film extravaganza imaginatively titled Lord of the Dance 3D (pictured). Trade paper The Hollywood Reporter said of the kitsch spectacle, “A vanity production so self-inflated they needed an extra dimension to contain it.” Renowned for being as skilled as a self-promoter as he was as a dancer, he went to ground after illness kept him from the dance floor for several months; a web search reveals his last interview was in 2010, during which he whisked a cub reporter off her feet in a LA hotel foyer. Classy. His Riverdance vision lives on, though; Troupe 1 is performing to rural crowds in Ukraine, Poland, Estonia and Latvia, while Troupe 2 entertains audiences in California's heartland.