NOT one but two stop motion animated films that put actors out of a job. Both are by turns inspired and silly, but vastly enjoyable.

Jackboots On Whitehall,(91 mins), from directors Edward and Rory McHenry, offers an alternative outcome to World War Two using puppets in much the same way they did in Team America.

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The voice cast is particularly impressive taking in the likes of Alan Cumming (Adolf Hitler), Timothy Spall (Winston Churchill), Richard E Grant (demented vicar), Rosamund Pike (English rose) and Ewan McGregor as a man whose big hands got him rejected for military service.The film offers the unexpected sight of Churchill, armed with a machine gun, defending Downing Street from the invading Nazis (theyve come under the Channel) and fleeing to Scot Land. There a fierce warrior with a blue-painted face and Aussie-tinged Scottish accent leads his forces against the Germans.

A Town Called Panic (77 mins) has the distinction of being the only stop-motion animated film ever to be chosen to compete for the Palme dOr at the Cannes Film Festival.

The childishly brilliant story has plastic toys Cowboy and Indian living with their good friend Horse (and you have to see him have a shower to believe it).

They decide to build him a barbecue as a birthday present and mayhem ensues. They cause chaos in the countryside and find themselves on a magical adventure across ice and underwater. Madly inventive, very silly and totally entrancing.