Oscar shorts are just like Jockeys: They come in assorted sizes and styles to suit your tastes.

This year's intimate mini-film fashions do not disappoint, and neither do the Pittsburgh Filmmakers in giving us an opportunity to see the films nominated for this year's Academy Awards. They will be shown for a week, starting tomorrow, at the cozy Regent Square Theater.

No fewer than 10 will be screened, ranging from the bikini-brief Canadian entry, "I Met the Walrus" (5 minutes), to the Danish longjohns-length "At Night" (40 min.).

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Oscar shorts

3 1/2 stars = Very good
Ratings explained

• Rating: Unrated but PG-13 in nature for subtitles

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• "The Mozart of Pickpockets" (France, 31 min.) directed by Philippe Pollet-Villard: A couple of bumbling thieves stumble upon a talented third partner in the form of a homeless deaf boy. "What's great about him is that we'll never know if he's smart or not," says one of the men -- but they soon find out in this beguiling little Gallic comedy.

The scene of the stonefaced kid's crimes is a cinema, and the climax takes place in a bowling alley.

• "The Substitute" (Italy, 17 min.) by Andrea Jubin: There's nothing that unruly high school students like more than a substitute teacher, haplessly trying to fill the hour and keep order while being tormented.

But this particular class is in for a surprise. Its eccentric replacement has a similar surprise in store for a high-level Chinese visitor. Jubin's exercise in comic anarchy is "dedicated to those who had difficulties with conduct."

• "Argentine Tangos" (Belgium, 13 min.) by Guido Thys and Anja Daelemans: This strangest by far of the short lot presents a nebbishy Walter Mitty-type office worker, who gets an Internet date on the condition that he learns to dance the tango -- for which passion and poetry are the key ingredients. Our guy has neither. What to do? He begs his imperious boss to teach him, with mischievously ambiguous results.

• "The Tonto Woman" (UK, 36 min.) by Daniel Barber and Matthew Brown: You don't find too many serious Westerns in the shorts category, but this is One Serious Western, involving a tattooed woman, long held captive by Mojave Indians, and a penitential cattle rustler who would be her rescuer. Its theme is the relativity of murder and adultery.

Heavy enough for ya?

• "My Love" (Russia, 27 min.) by Alexander Petrov: The single most beautiful and original animation technique I've seen in years is this gorgeous tale of a 19th-century Russian boy in love with two diametric-opposite women. Director Petrov, who has been nominated three previous times in this category (winning for "The Old Man and the Sea" in 1999) uses a series of period-perfect Impressionistic paintings in overlapping dissolves to bring his romantic, bittersweet story to life, with exquisite rural-village details and Russian symbolism intact. It's as if the cinematographers were Renoir and Seurat, and it's not to be missed.

• "I Met the Walrus" (Canada, 5 min.) by Josh Raskin: Talk about luck. Back in 1969 at the tender age of 14, Raskin somehow managed to get John Lennon to agree to a tape-recorded interview. Some 40 years later, he has combined the Lennon peace message ("Violence begets violence!") with the old reel-to-reel medium in a brief but wildly entertaining style of neo-psychedelic cartoon that takes a potshot or two at McCartney's Wings, too.

• "Peter and the Wolf" (UK & Poland, 27 min.) by Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman: This brilliant variation on the famous folktale's theme contains no dialogue and very little of Prokofiev's immortal score, but features great visual creativity and a wonderful sense of humor in depicting the beloved characters themselves: The boy is a wide-eyed darling. His fat cat and two accident-prone bird companions are hilarious (one is a silly goose, the other relies on a balloon for flight). The wolf is to die for -- literally, if these littler critters aren't careful. A child's and adult's delight!

These morsels are so tasty, I want to see them again. See you at the theater shortly.

For tickets, times and more information, call the Regent Square Theater at 412-682-4111.