Golden spike?

Even with their best picture wins at the Golden Globes, it's unlikely "Brokeback Mountain" and "Walk the Line" will enjoy much in the way of victory laps at the box office this week.

That's because the Golden Globes are essentially just one more addition to a picture's Oscar momentum, not the bearer of greater box office returns. Oscar is what it's all about at the cineplex — it's the only awards show that has a measurable effect on box office receipts.

Generally, Globe winners that see business spike the week after the show are platform releases adding theaters. If a winning picture has been in the market for a while, it often drops the following weekend. It all boils down to how individual studios react in their marketing and distribution strategies.

"Brokeback Mountain" and "Walk the Line" were already seen as likely locks for best picture nominations at the Academy Awards, in part because they've proven themselves commercially.

Historically, the academy prefers to bestow its top prize on a movie that didn't need the direct help of an Oscar nomination to get off the ground in theaters. (Last year's "Million Dollar Baby" would be one exception to that rule.)

"Walk the Line" will soon cross the $100 million mark and stands as the highest-grossing music biography on record, while "Brokeback Mountain" has moseyed across the country to consistently strong numbers in limited release, defying the notion that it would not play outside the coasts.

The hullabaloo surrounding Ang Lee's cowboy love story has become a broken record, but the picture's $32.1 million gross in 39 days of platform release is mighty impressive for a western and for even more notable for a gay-themed movie.

But for the most part, contending movies are just biding time until Oscar nominations are announced Jan. 31, since the Globes provided no further insight into the best picture race — not that there ever was a direct correlation between the aggregated opinions of foreign journalists of dubious distinction and the academy.

The Golden Globes seem to nominate and award the movies they think the academy will nominate in order to give themselves an air of prescience and prestige.

To the public, the Globes is but one of myriad awards shows that don't mean anything beyond what clothes the stars are wearing.

And interest in the broadcast continues to wane. This year, the Globes ditched its traditional Sunday slot after losing viewers to "Desperate Housewives" last year.

But airing on a less competitive Monday night only gave the Globes a modest improvement, with the show drawing around 18.7 million viewers, or about two million more than 2005, according to early Nielsen Media Research numbers. In 2004, the show had 26.8 million viewers.

The popularity of the Golden Globes and the Oscars, in part, stems from the popularity of the nominees. The crop was weak this year, like it was in 2005. Of course, the best picture nominees for the Oscars could be just as drab.

Among the likely candidates, "Brokeback Mountain" generates the most excitement because of its subject matter, even if the movie itself is languid. "Walk the Line" is, by far, the most widely seen and the closest thing to a fun movie. The rest — "Good Night, and Good Luck," "Crash," "Capote," "Munich" — are likely to engender audience indifference.

Maybe the academy will shake things up to show it's not out of touch and to spur viewership, and nominate some pictures that aren't serious in the traditional Oscar sense. Trouble is, 2005 was such an awful year at the movies that pickings are slim.

If the industry wants to spice up things up, the Oscars could nominate "Batman Begins." Christopher Nolan's superhero movie proved artful and commercially appealing and resurrected a moribund franchise. It's the least compromising among the year's popular pictures, and a good movie to boot — the kind that people can root for.

Another possibility is "Pride & Prejudice." The Jane Austen adaptation is poised to have the greatest box office boost from a best picture nomination — it has already enjoyed a solid run and now percolates in limited release.