On Friday, May 28, actor and renowned martial artist Tony Jaa rode an elephant to a Buddhist temple in Surin, Thailand. He then shaved his head, took vows, and was officially ordained as a Buddhist monk. Anyone who has seen his most recent film Ong Bak 2 will not be surprised by this news. The guy has a thing for elephants.

This week on the Blu-ray market, I come back from the Sundance Film Festival to an enormous stack of Blu-ray movies ready to be reviewed.

Rob Hunter loves movies. He also loves kicking ass and taking names in Thai restaurants. These two joys come together in the form of cash money payments that he receives every week and immediately uses to buy more DVDs. Not a lot of titles hitting shelves this week, but we do get epic action from exotic lands, love stories in the Big Apple, and zombies across America.

Goddamn I’m sick of making lists. Thankfully this is the last one of the year for me, and even better it’s the one I find most important.

Magnet Releasing has just sent over three intense, totally badass new clips from their VOD release Ong Bak 2, and I feel as if we’d be doing the world a major disservice if we didn’t hand them over to the public immediately.

This martial arts flick coming out of Indonesia is, wait for it, far better than Ong Bak. Let that sink in, and then let me explain why inside.

On September 25th, the much-beloved Ong Bak 2 arrived on VOD, Amazon and XBOX Live. And to celebrate, we’re hooking you up with a chance to relive some of your favorite Muy Thai movies with a Tony Jaa refresher course.

Ready for a trailer that will almost literally punch you in the face? How about a taste of Tony Jaa kicking the hell out of everything in sight in the highly anticipated Ong Bak 2?

The Toronto Film Festival paints midnights red with zombies, flesh-eating cheerleaders, badass bitches and Tony Jaa.

Bold Claim of the Day: Ong Bak 2 is the greatest martial arts movie ever made. Not the smartest, or the funniest, or the most dramatic… the greatest.

Day one here at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival is behind us here in Austin and upon rising from our drunken — off of the Drafthouse milkshakes, of course — states, we are ready to give you a feel for what is happening here on the ground in the capital of Texas.

Between our own scouring of the schedule and the countless emails from publicists, producers and directors, we are confident that we’ve got a handle on which films you should absolutely see at all costs should you be coming here to Austin this weekend. So here’s a list of the must sees, from us to you.

We’ll have reviews on these and other films from SXSW when FSR invades Austin March13th through the 21st!