What our writers love this week

DVDs

'When We Were Kings'

"Soul Power," now at the Varsity, is the companion film to this 1996 documentary. Where "Soul Power" concerns a 1974 concert in Zaire featuring African and African-American musicians, "Kings" focuses on the "Rumble in the Jungle" championship boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The events were linked and the movies — both excellent — overlap. But "Kings" thrillingly captures Ali in a joyous moment of discovering African roots.

Tom Keogh, special to The Seattle Times

Nightclubs

Tiki party

This recent heat wave has given us visions of hula skirts and aloha shirts. The city's coolest tiki party starts this afternoon at the cocktail lounge Vessel, where top mixologists — including guest tiki bartender Blair Reynolds of Portland — will make umbrella drinks and obscure island classics such as Nui Nui and Pearl Diver Punch. Doors open 2 p.m. to midnight, 312 Fifth Ave., Seattle; 206-652-0521 or www.vesselseattle.com.

Tan Vinh, Seattle Times staff reporter

Books

'The Master and Margarita'

Why not heighten the hallucinatory effects of our sweltering summer by revisiting this posthumous masterpiece by Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940). The book is set in a 1930s Moscow "scorched to a crisp" where the devil and his cohorts — including a large, talking, bulletproof cat — create incessant havoc ... all in aid of a novelist who's written a most peculiar tale about Pontius Pilate. In the 1996 Vintage edition, two superb translators, Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor, deliver the tale with a bright, savage, incendiary whimsy. Out of print, but available secondhand through www.bookfinder.com for reasonable prices.

Michael Upchurch, Seattle Time arts writer