Book-scented candles, Margaret Atwood beermeister, Film Festivals, London Ontario as serial killer-ville, Marilyn Monroe in psychiatric hospital: Cultural Digest August 28

Mags' brew

• This creeps me out just a bit but if you're really crazy about books, you can now make your entire place smell like books with book-scented candles. I can't imagine old pages of Shakespeare are creating this smell; I'm sure it's chemicals made in some laboratory somewhere. Ik.
• Isabella at Magnificent Octopus writes about discovering Margaret Atwood's beer, made with her husband and a brewery. Cool label and cheers.
• Seven Italian films in competition at TIFF this year. I'm glad to see that Italian filmmakers are doing interesting stuff again after years of making shlock.
• Speaking of film, the MWFF, which opened yesterday, continues to rile controversy as Denis Coderre, Montreal's mayor, asks Losique (the Festival's long-time director) to step down. The Festival has pulled off an almost unheard of feat in Canada: putting on a festival this year and last with no government funding at all (469 films in total) after varying levels of government refused to support the Festival (after some fishy accounting possibly). This links to the story in French.
• An intriguing new book looks at London, Ontario, and all that exists beneath the surface, including the fact that at one point, it was considered the serial killer capital.
• One of her letters shows the terrifying experience that Marilyn Monroe went through when she spent time in a psychiatric hospital.