A couple of weeks ago I posted an HE-plus piece about one of the most moronic time-passage sequences in the history of motion pictures. It’s contained in Chris Weitz‘s New Moon, the second Twilight film. It proves one of two things: (a) the Twi-harders were either bone dumb or (b) the producers believed them to be.

New Moon contained an ambitious shot that tried to visually convey how completely Kristen Stewart‘s Bella had sunk into depression. Months and months of sitting in a stupor. The camera circled around her three times as she sat in her bedroom in front of a bay window that looked out on her front yard, and either you spotted what was happening or you didn’t.

Anyone with a reasonable number of brain cells would have noticed how the front yard changed from month to month. In the first shot a tree has brown leaves and kids on the street are wearing Halloween costumes. In the second the branches are bare and somebody’s raking leaves on the front lawn. In the third shot the lawn is covered with snow.

And yet Summit producers decided to place titles — OCTOBER, NOVEMBER, DECEMBER — over each camera pass so viewers wouldn’t be confused about the time-passage aspect. Presumably fans complained during test screenings that they couldn’t understand why leaves would fall of a tree so quickly or how there would suddenly be snow covering the front yard, etc.

I don’t believe Weitz decided to use the titles on his own. I’ll bet $100 he was forced into it.