Each year, we ask staffers to pick the piece of media that summed up the year for them, be it a book, movie, Web site… or a sports game. Here are the highlights of 2007:

Michael Scott’s Dunder Mifflin ad on The Office

Image from “Local ad.”

By Jason Plautz, Multimedia Editor

Even in its uneven, strike-shortened fourth season, The Office is still one of the best shows on TV; and no episode this season has been as good as “Local Ad,” where the whole gang teams up to make a commercial for the paper company. The ad is cheesy (The theme from Chariots of Fire? Really?), overdramatic and just a little bit racist (Stanley, Dunder-Mifflin’s token black worker, plays a prisoner picking up trash), but above all, it’s impressive. The fact that a group of misfits led by a childish idiot could produce an ad that’s not half-bad speaks to 2007, a year when YouTube became more important than ever. Any chump with a video camera could become an overnight phenom (even Al Gore nabbed an Oscar and an Emmy). CNN allowed us to use YouTube to participate in a presidential debate. A YouTube video (by Office writers, no less) became a popular sounding board for the writers’ strike. But no matter how many self-produced videos get played on the Web, none of them can ever top Michael Scott’s ad, especially since none feature the sublime Kelly Kapoor dancing in front of the Taj Mahal.

Special irony note: You can’t view the ad in question on YouTube because NBC rudely removed all videos of their shows from the site. Knocking on YouTube is also so 2007.

Apple’s iPhone

Rendering of Apple’s iPhone.

By Ryan Gallagher, Tech Express blogger

Love it or hate it, Apple’s iPhone continues to make headlines nearly a year after its announcement at Macworld 2007. While many complain that the iPhone lacks many features of other high-end devices, its design and usability will continue to push the envelope for other mobile manufactures for years to come. The image of throngs of sleepy-eyed people lining up in front of Apple stores almost a week before the June 29 release will not fade from the public’s eye anytime soon. To date, Apple has sold nearly 1.5 million iPhones, a number which probably has Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer turning in his sleep. With a second generation (and hopefully cheaper) iPhone likely already on the drawing board, Steve Jobs’ hippie empire will not be going away anytime soon.

In The Valley of Elah

The poster for Elah.

By Alex Campbell, Politics reporter

Amid all the justifying and finger-pointing over Iraq, it is easy to forget that war rips apart families and shatters livelihoods. In the Valley of Elah is a startling but subtle tale of a Vietnam veteran’s search for answers when his son, just back from Iraq, goes missing. Tommy Lee Jones brilliantly portrays the father, a no-nonsense patriot with strong moral conviction. He proudly proclaims that his son was bringing “democracy to a shithole.” The truth, which Jones’ character learns through video shot on his son’s phone, is startling and horrifying. The son had crumbled under the psychological burden of the war and committed atrocities. As the father looks for his son and for answers, good and evil blur. Without preaching or shouting, In the Valley of Elah is a heart-wrenching reminder that war is profoundly fucked-up.

“It’s Britney, Bitch:” Britney Spears at the MTV Video Music Awards

By Lisa Gartner, Life & Style Editor

As Britney Spears toddled around the VMA’s stage, her painted-on abs thrusting in what she must have perceived as the direction of the keg, she proceeded to pass out on a backup dancer (they will probably tell this story at their wedding), and I couldn’t help but wonder: Is this schwasted, washed-up pop star onto something (other than a highly concentrated form of crack cocaine)?

“Gimme more:” is that not what 2007 was all about? You didn’t want a phone – you wanted an iPhone, and then the iTouch. (I could go into a highly morbid tangent about how Apple’s technology mirrors our increasing alienation from each other and ourselves, needing to feel “touch” from our technology, but… oh wait, I just did.) You didn’t want an A-, you wanted the damn A. Obama offered us a campaign promise, so we saw if Hillary could up the ante.

And Britney, having just shot two young’ns out of her nether regions and divorced the COOLEST human waste in the world, was our symbol – nay, martyr. She was our mutual malcontent. Her Microsoft Paint abs were our abs; our year was her perpetual hangover.

Oh, and I heard that she later said she was stumbling because she had a broken ankle. Didn’t we all, Britney? Didn’t we all?

I Love New York

Promo for New York.

By Jenny An, writer

If winter 2008 will be the season of reality shows, they all have a lot to live up to. In January 2007, I Love New York amped up trashy television to the size of its star’s augmented breasts and Best Week Ever has not been the same since. The show had everything right-wing America says is wrong with society: sex, violence, drunken debauchery and poor grammar. Viewers ate it up.

When Tiffany Pollard, better known as “New York,” picked herself up after two heartbreaking rejections by Flavor Flav and vowed to find a better man, the world held her hand. When she threw glasses at her lucky suitors, the world cheered her on. And when “Tango,” her stud muffin of choice, broke up with her on the reunion show for disrespecting his mama, the world got giddy all over again because the fun was not over. I Love New York 2 was created.

The second season even made many men’s dreams come true with open Internet casting over the summer where viewers could vote. Debauchery and democracy — now that’s America.

Redacted

Poster for Redacted.

By Paul Schrodt, writer

Like me, you probably missed Redacted during its short-lived (but notorious) run in theaters, which prompted Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum’s most “conflicted” reaction to a film in recent memory. Here’s to hoping that changes: Brian De Palma’s fictionalized account of U.S. soldiers who rape and murder a 14-year-old Iraqi girl stands out from the slog of Issue of the Day flicks for its real, palpable anger, making it the must-see media in a year heavy with geopolitical guilt. Hollywood has picked apart the Middle East from a surprisingly cool distance, to the point that Syriana and A Mighty Heart have affected their own shaky-cam aesthetic to translate seriousness. De Palma cuts away the bullshit and aims straight for the gut, ending with a montage of bloody war photos deemed too “shocking” to air on TV. The rough-hewed, documentary-like aesthetic makes it all look “real,” but De Palma’s point is that our obsession with seeing distracts us from the true suffering on the ground—so it only makes sense that the final act of brutality should be obviously staged. At the New York Film Festival, De Palma accused distributor Magnolia Pictures of selling out by censoring the final montage for legal purposes. But it only adds to the sensation that Redacted was, well, redacted: In a War on Terror that looks increasingly fuzzy, De Palma’s faux-truth is truth after all.

FreeRice.com

Screenshot of FreeRice.com.

By Lizzie Schiffman, reporter

In the supercharged environmentalist insanity that followed An Inconvenient Truth, one globally conscious program inoffensively contributes to the greater good without guilt-tripping, asking for funds or demonstrating with elaborate public protests. Introduced just eight weeks ago, FreeRice.com appeals to grammar nerds and tree-huggers alike (two groups I admittedly fit into).

The basic premise is this: the site offers a free vocabulary game. Words of varying difficulty pop up along with four potential synonyms. If the user identifies the correct definition, the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) will donate rice to needy families in more than 75 countries.

As you compete to raise your difficulty level, 20 grains of rice are donated with every right answer. Not only does the game fund donations, but the rice is purchased locally to help support local farmers, and the WFP also works to help build self-reliance in needy areas. Advertisements at the bottom of the game screen generate enough revenue to fund the rice donations.

FreeRice makes it easy to help the world without leaving your desk chair, and is probably the best justification you’ll ever find for playing computer games until 2 a.m. on a Tuesday. Not only is the vocab totally impressive, the game itself is pretty fun, and no matter how much rice fills your digital bowl by the end of the game, you’ll leave with a warm, fuzzy feeling I’ve never experienced after even the most rigorous rounds of spider solitaire.

Ratatouille

Image from Ratatouille.

By Patrick St. Michel, Blogs Editor

Confession time: I hated 2007. The world seemed meaner and stupider this year, from “snarkiness” becoming a beloved trait, lolcats getting laughs, and people going gaga for 300 (worst of both worlds). As the “teen” in my age vanished, I found a world devoid of innocence, intent on shooting you down at every step while reminding you how lame you were for not owning an iPhone or Halo 3. Growing up stings, and 2007’s culture of content didn’t make it any smoother.

Ratatouille’s innocence and dreaminess stands in stark contrast to the rest of 2007’s media output. In Disney/Pixar’s latest, Remy the Rat aspires to be a famous French chef, even though he’s a lowly rodent. The furry protagonist doesn’t give up, and keeps cooking, aided by a human who wants to just be… somebody. The film’s message isn’t anything new – follow your dreams. Yet that earnest moral seemed revolutionary in 2007, a year reveling in greed, bad behavior and yelling “THIS IS SPARTA!!!”

I should be picking something moronic, 300 or Tila Tequila, but that would be giving into cynicism. Ratatouille stands in opposition to this year, embracing discarded ideas like innocence, determination and love. Yet, most importantly, Ratatouille offers hope. Hope that life can be child-like sweet. Hope dreams can be achieved, and that love, for people and ideas, still exists. And hope in humanity, because in a complicated and ugly year, someone still made a film as simple and gorgeous as Ratatouille.

Pissed Jeans, Hope For Men

Hope For Men album cover

By Spencer Kornhaber, Features Editor

Most glowing reviews of Pissed Jeans‘ Hope For Men focused on its heavy, impenetrable sound — as if making ugly music is a virtue. But the Pennsylvania hardcore act is more than just loud riffs, broken-radiator drumming and Matt Korvette’s brain-dead shrieking. Well, the shrieking is pretty important, but that’s only because of what Korvette is shrieking about. Hope For Men matters because it skewers the sorry state of macho-ness in 2007, where increasingly suburbanized, frustrated, over-informed and under-socialized guys forget their problems in the unironic ugliness of 300 and bad bands that sound like Pissed Jeans.

The seventh track on the album speeds along all punk-like until it gets to a prog-metal breakdown. Over meandering guitars and slinking percussion, Korvette growls: “I’M TURRRRNING NOW!” On first listen, you assume he’s snapped, finally ready to kick the shit out of someone. But revisit the first half of the song: He’s just turning out of a traffic lane.

That’s their method: brutal riffing, tortured vocals, mundane problems. It sounds like a recipe for a terrible nu-metal record. But Korvette’s hilarious language (I’d never realized that using the phrase “distant relatives” means you’re a yuppie) and the band’s inventive, unfriendly sound work as art and satire. Like a lot of guys, Korvette yells when he gets mad. But at least he admits that what he’s really mad about nowadays is funny forwarded e-mails, hiking trips and girls who prefer voicemail to love letters.

Facebook Applications

Facebook’s platform.

By Tom Giratikanon, Editor-in-chief

When it hit theaters in 1998, The Truman Show made me laugh, and then made me panic. Life as media? The thought was absurd! Oh, sure, reality TV came. But you still had to try out, get picked and be made into a star. It’s Facebook that realized the vision of The Truman Show — 57 million times over, and counting. More than blogs, YouTube or camera phones, Facebook has sliced and diced our lives into tidy pieces of data, and broadcasts it 24/7 into the infinite vastness of the Web’s databases. We became both Jim Carrey and that guy watching him from the bathtub, reacting to the ups and downs of lives we’ll never touch.

And then came Apps. In one moment, Facebook made itself a television network to trump all other networks – and all other mediums.

Checking profiles has long been the new channel surfing and every media company wants in, racing to capture Facebook users’ attention with Applications that deliver news, comics, music and more. Sketch out the future of any news organization or advertising firm in 2020, and you can come up with dozens of gizmos to try to fit media into. But you know people will still be talking to each other on social networks, even if they’re not bathed in Facebook blue. There’s nothing richer, stronger or more compelling than human relationships, and yet Facebook has transformed them into points on a chart, ready to be exploited by every new App.

So welcome to 2008. At last, we’re one with media.

All images published under fair use.