Nomination polls for the 77th Annual Academy Awards will close at 5 p.m. PST Jan. 15, 2005, and by then the films of the summer months will be a distant memory for many, overshadowed by cold weather and award-pandering pomp from the likes of Martin Scorcese, David O. Russell and Oliver Stone.

Still, every year there are notable holdovers from the season of popcorn fare that show up come nomination time. Last year, the big surprises were the little-seen “City of God,” which garnered four nominations, and the inclusion of Johnny Depp as a swashbuckler in the hugely popular and hugely commercial “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

This summer again has produced a number of films and performances that should withstand the onslaught of stars such as Jude Law, Rene Zellwegger and Leonardo DiCaprio, who show up in the multiplexes about the same time each year as Santas show up in malls.

Excluding the Best Picture category, which is too close to call even in December (the very mediocre “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” was indeed a nominee last time), here is a list of the performances and films that will be mentioned again, albeit months removed from their release.

Best Actor: Jeff Bridges gave an outstanding performance in Tod Williams’ “The Door in the Floor.” The consistently great yet under-appreciated Bridges should prove to be the darling summer holdover of the Academy. He has two things that the voters love in candidates for this category: a career of underrated work and a portrayal of a John Irving character (the previous adaptation of a novel by the author was “Cider House Rules” which got Michael Caine a nomination and legitimized Tobey Maguire’s career).

Best Actress: Speaking of adaptations, “We Don’t Live Here Anymore” brings two short stories by Andre Dubus to the screen. The last time Dubus’s work was cinematized, “In the Bedroom” was the product and it produced nominations for Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek and Marisa Tomei, and this time around should be no different. Laura Dern stands out from an exceptional cast — which includes Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Watts and Peter Krause — playing a jealous and tortured housewife struggling with the implications of adultery.

Catalina Sandino Moreno should garner a nomination just on the fact that she really had to swallow inch-long pellets in her portrayal of a young Columbian drug smuggler in “Maria Full of Grace.” Writer-director Joshua Marston wanted an unsettling sense of realism for his first feature and Moreno’s striking performance certainly provided this. Also, as Keisha Castle-Hughes of “Whale Rider” proved, the Academy has a soft spot for young, foreign heroines from the summer months.

Best Documentary: In a category that used to be composed of a winner that some people saw among a list of films that no one saw, the list of nominees for 2004 most certainly will exclude a film or two that did well at the box office this summer. Headed by the extraordinarily successful Moorecumentary “Fahrenheit 9/11,” the Summer of the Documentary yielded critically acclaimed and economically successful films such as “Supersize Me,” “Control Room,” “The Hunting of the President,” “The Corporation,” “Outfoxed” and “The Lost Boys of Sudan.”

And yet, in a year in which even Disney released a documentary (“America’s Heart and Soul”), the best of this unprecedented crop was “Control Room,” a powerful examination of Al-Jazeera and media representation during the Iraq war by Jehane Noujain, the co-director of 2001’s acclaimed “Startup.com.”

Best Original Screenplay: Writer-director Richard Linklater (“Dazed and Confused,” “Waking Life”) is quietly becoming one of the his generation’s best filmmakers, and this summer’s “Before Sunset” — the sequel to his 1995 cult classic “Before Sunrise” — legitimizes this fact. The screenplay, written by Linklater and the film’s two stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, is exceptional and also the easiest way for the Academy to recognize what will prove to be one of the best films of the year.

Wild Card: There was no film this summer that penetrated the American social consciousness quite as emphatically as “Napoleon Dynamite.” Sure “Fahrenheit 9/11” was a catalyst for political examination and “Spiderman 2” broke records, but nobody was reciting lines from these films days after they had exited the theater. “Napoleon Dynamite” is the type of film that inspires Halloween costumes and dorm room poster selection. Don’t be surprised if it gets a worthy mention come nomination time — either for screenplay or best actor for Jon Heder. An unlikely happening and maybe an adverse one, for it would threaten its cult classic cachet.