Quick Takes: Two T. S. Eliot Prize finalists protest patron

Two finalists for the T.S. Eliot Prize for poetry have withdrawn, saying they objected to investment company Aurum Funds sponsoring the United Kingdom award.

The Poetry Book Society, which runs the annual award for a collection of poetry, lost funding from Arts Council England as part of government spending cuts.

“I fully understand why the Poetry Book Society has looked elsewhere for funding,” said Australian John Kinsella, who was shortlisted for his work “Armour.” But as “an anticapitalist in full-on form,” he said, he had to withdraw on ethical grounds.

Alice Oswald, a nominee for “Memorial,” withdrew earlier this week on similar grounds.

The Poetry Book Society’s website now features eight nominees, down from 10. The winner of the award, which carries a $23,500 prize, will be announced Jan. 16.

—Reuters

Roots must get NBC approval

Questlove has revealed in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine that the controversy that sprang from GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann’s November appearance on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” resulted in a new level of network oversight.

According to the New York Post, Questlove says that the morning after he and the “Late Night” house band the Roots introduced Bachmann on the show with the Fishbone song “Lyin’ Ass Bitch,” he was brought to NBC’s headquarters and told that every song the Roots played would have to be approved by three NBC executives.

The musical dig stirred up a heap of outrage from Bachmann and others, causing NBC and Fallon to apologize for the incident.

Previously the band was free to make its own choices as to what to play.

—Patrick Kevin Day

‘The Fly’ seems to be grounded

Fans of “The Fly” were intrigued a couple years back when David Cronenberg began working on a script for Fox that would put a new spin on one of his best-known movies. The script, it was reported at the time, would basically offer a new telling of the 1986 horror film, but with up-to-date special-effects.

It turns out that the intrigue was for naught.

Cronenberg says that although he finished the script awhile back — creating “a different take on some elements of the plot” — the project hasn’t gotten off the ground.

“It seems to be dead, and it’s hard to penetrate the mysteries of the studio,” Cronenberg said in an interview. “I’m not really getting a straight answer.”

Any attempt to extricate it from Fox would fall flat, he added, because the studio has owned the project from the beginning and isn’t likely to part with it.

A Fox spokesman did not comment on the project’s status.

—Steven Zeitchik