Every year, as the gossip begins to swirl and the tabloid machine amps up its coverage in anticipation of yet another red carpet, it’s easy to forget that the Academy Awards don’t really matter.

After all, the Oscars merely represent a consensus, a point of agreement among thousands of voters, most of whom are industry insiders. This is why so many pundits factor box office receipts into their predictions for Oscar night: There’s a profit motivation behind the awards, on the part of the films’ producers (who want to reach a wider audience), the voters (who want to ratify the tastes of audiences) and the press (which wants to boost ratings and sell more magazines).

Tell the world that there’s an official “best picture,” and people are bound to buy a ticket or two to check it out or pick up a magazine to read about its award-winning stars.

So it’s difficult as a critic, with the 64th Golden Globe Awards on the horizon (set to air Monday at 8 p.m. on NBC), not to feel like a New York City football fan watching the playoffs this year. We know that our favorites — “The Fountain,” “Flannel Pajamas,” “The Proposition” — are already out of the running, but we keep watching because, well, everyone else is. And in the past month, we’ve also found ourselves swept up in the story lines and dramas that have been playing out in anticipation of Oscar night next month.

THE ROAD TO OSCAR

Early in the game, the National Board of Review and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association named Clint Eastwood’s “Letters From Iwo Jima” — a movie some critics, and most audiences, hadn’t yet seen — the best film of the year, an announcement that led the studio to hastily plan screenings for critics and bump up the film’s release date. Then the Golden Globe nominations — voted on by the mostly inconsequential Hollywood Foreign Press Association — calmed the “Iwo Jima” mania, deferring instead to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Babel” as the most nominated film. These nominations were soon followed by a wide swath of top 10 lists from the nation’s biggest critics, turning our attention to the likes of “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “Little Children,” and even David Lynch’s mind-bending “Inland Empire.”

As if that wasn’t confusing enough, last week’s nearly simultaneous announcements by the Screen Actors Guild and the Producers Guild brought “Dreamgirls” back to the big show — a big-name Oscar contender some thought was on the verge of disappearing from the conversation after its lukewarm critical reception.

We finally entered the homestretch this past Tuesday, with the Directors Guild — a reliable predictor of who will go on to win the best director Oscar, not to mention best picture — abandoning the likes of Mr. Eastwood, “United 93,” and “Apocalypto,” and putting its weight instead behind “Dreamgirls,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” “The Queen,” “Babel,” and “The Departed.” Speculation of the day? That maybe, just maybe, Martin Scorsese will finally be honored by the Academy.

THE GOLDEN GLOBES

In the old days, the Golden Globes mattered far more than they do this year. With recent changes to the Academy Awards calendar, the Globes’ relevance has been greatly diminished. In past years, the Golden Globes were held days before the nomination ballots for the Academy Awards were due — leading some to believe that a surprise victory might also boost a nominee in the Oscars race.

But this year, the Oscar nomination polls close Saturday, two days before the Golden Globes are handed out in a ceremony less about the films than the fashion. So Globe winners can no longer affect the Oscar nominations, but they still can play a role in which nominees takes home the coveted statuette.

Serious film writers are left in a difficult position. The Golden Globes matter less than ever, but the celebrity-industrial complex has never watched the night more closely, eager for any gossipy scoop on the road leading up to Oscar night. Monday night’s rating will be huge, arts pages will report the results with enthusiasm, and Oscar bloggers will look at the winners list as an indicator of what might happen January 23, when the Academy announces its nominees, or on February 25, when the 79th Academy Awards finally settle the speculation once and for all.

So we’ll be watching Monday, more out of obligation than excitement. Despite their irrelevance, here are five stories to watch for come Golden Globes night:

MEL GIBSON’S AWARDS SPEECH

His bloody “Apocalypto,” which opened at the box office with a bang but fizzled quickly, is nominated for best foreign film at the Globes. This matters for two reasons: Would a win in this category boost his chance for Oscar Gold? And what in the world would his acceptance speech sound like (not to mention what kind of response it would receive)?

BORAT’S LAST LAUGH?

The comedy sensation of 2006, “Borat” was named one of the top films of the year by the American Film Institute and nominated for a Best Picture Golden Globe in the comedy and musical category. No doubt some voters would think of it as the hip (the Hollywood Foreign Press is noting if not hip) thing to do to pick the film as one of the best of the year. What would it do to the Oscar race, though, for this mockumentary to beat out such heavyweights as “Dreamgirls” and “Little Miss Sunshine”? And again, the acceptance speech…

NOT SO FUNNY ANYMORE

The most competitive — and interesting — category of the night will be the best actor category for comedies and musicals. Each nominee is long deserving of a trophy. Sacha Baron Cohen (“Borat”) pulled off the comedic coup of the year; Johnny Depp returned to the screen as his now-classic “Pirates of the Caribbean” swashbuckler and single-handedly steered a bust of a film into blockbuster waters; Aaron Eckhart finally received the attention he has long deserved for his conniving cigarette lobbyist in “Thank You for Smoking”; Chiwetel Ejiofor gave one of the performances of the year in “Kinky Boots”; and Will Ferrell, always the reliable actor, funny or not, made “Stranger Than Fiction” a comedy worth caring about. It’s a wide-open race with five deserving talents.

CLINT VS. CLINT, WINNER: SCORSESE

While Clint Eastwood has been the toast of Hollywood this year, crafting not one but two brilliant war epics (“Flags of our Fathers”and “Letters From Iwo Jima”), his two best director nominations might just split his vote and cost him the trophy, allowing “The Departed” director Martin Scorsese, probably the most popular man in American movie history never to win an Oscar, to take home at least the Golden Globe. (If he does win, does he say something about his Oscar drought?)

SMALL TRIUMPH FOR ‘THE FOUNTAIN’?

Some people, including this critic, regard “The Fountain” as the year’s best — and most overlooked — film. Though it was a bit too complex, mystifying, or pretentious for some, eliminating it from serious contention in the best picture or best actor (Hugh Jackman) categories, it still has a chance at winning the Golden Globe (and perhaps the Oscar) for best original score. It’s certainly a deserving candidate; Clint Mansell’s score is just as transcendent as the story.