With zombie films, movie trailers, the music video for "Who Needs Ya?" by Steppenwolf and a fake Fox News broadcast complete with Geraldo Rivera, there is only one place in town providing this sort of variety.

Tonight at The Ritz, fans of stop-motion animation and collectors of action figures can together rejoice and bask in the light reflected from the big screen as the G.I. Joe Stop-Motion Film Festival projects 19 shorts dedicated to the holy matrimony of toys and film.

G.I. Joe Fest is the nation's first film festival to devote itself completely to the works of stop-motion artists who manipulate G.I. Joe or similar figures. That simple manifesto has led to some terrific wish fulfillment for anyone whose childhood ever involved battles between small plastic people.

Painstaking effort has gone into these frame-by-frame compositions. Most of them are impressively smooth, not only with regard to the movement of the characters but also the movement of the camera. What's really impressive, though, are the special effects. Gas falling from the sky and underwater adventure, to say nothing of the profusion of explosions and flowing blood, all help to create an authentic cinematic experience.

For all their varied forms, however, there is a kind of monotony to what G.I. Joe Fest presents. It is difficult to avoid thinking certain selections are "neat" or "cute." This occurs a time or two more often than being "wowed," but the entire program is only 93 minutes, so hold on through these moments (and they are just mere moments). Films such as the "Dead Corps" and "Bloody Revenge" keep things going and shouldn't be missed, so time your bathroom breaks accordingly.

The simple truth is that stop-motion animation is not a daily offering in the local cineplex. At 7:30, the Alamo Drafthouse is offering a rare opportunity to see on the big screen the sort of thing available almost exclusively streaming from the Internet.

The magic of the G.I. Joe Stop-Motion Fim Festival is that it allows us to see what had existed only in our imaginations; the very things we could never quite accomplish with just our two hands and mouth sound effects.

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