World on the Web remembers influential entertainers and writers who passed away in 2007.

Ike Turner, 76, Dec. 12 | One of rock’s critical architects, a bandleader, record producer and musician.

Ingmar Bergman, 89, July 30 | internationally acclaimed Swedish director of more than 50 films (”Smiles of a Summer Night,” “The Seventh Seal”).

Art Buchwald, 81, Jan. 17 | humorist and renowned syndicated columnist for The Washington Post.

Deborah Kerr, 86, Oct. 16 | actress perhaps best remembered for her kiss with Burt Lancaster as waves crashed over them on a Hawaiian beach in the wartime drama “From Here to Eternity.”

Madeleine L’Engle, 88, Sept. 6 | author whose novel “A Wrinkle in Time” has been enjoyed by generations of schoolchildren and adults since the 1960s.

Luciano Pavarotti, 71, Sept. 6 | booming Italian “king of the high C’s” tenor, the most famous opera singer in the world whose recordings sold more than 100 million albums.

Anna Nicole Smith, 39, Feb. 8 | voluptuous former Playboy centerfold who married an octogenarian billionaire and waged a legal battle for his fortune all the way to the Supreme Court.

Jane Wyman, 90, Sept. 10 | actress who won an Oscar for her role as a deaf rape victim in the film “Johnny Belinda” but best remembered as the power-mad winery owner in TV’s “Falcon Crest” 1981-1990 and as Ronald Reagan’s first wife.

Kurt Vonnegut, 84, April 11 | best-selling satirical novelist and social critic whose works dripped with cynicism and dark humor (”Slaughterhouse-Five”).

Mstislav Rostropovich, 80, April 27 | master cellist, conductor, and music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., 1977-1994, who championed artistic freedom and human rights in his Soviet homeland during the last decades of the Cold War.Norman Mailer, 84, Nov. 10 | contentious, hard-living Pulitzer Prize-winning author (”The Armies of the Night,” “The Executioner’s Song” “The Naked and the Dead”) and cofounder of The Village Voice newspaper in New York.

Jim Nesbitt, 75, Nov. 29 | country music songwriter (”Looking for More in ‘64″) and reputed “King of Country Comedy” in the 1960s.

Evel Knievel, 69, Nov. 30 | soaring motorcycle daredevil whose feats (flight across 13 buses) and failures (rocket-powered Snake River Canyon crash) made him an international icon in the 1970s.

Johnny Hart, 76, April 7 | cartoonist, creator of the comic strip, B.C., who often wove Christian themes into his work.

Merv Griffin, 82, Aug. 12 | singer, actor, and talk show host who made his fortune inventing and producing the “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune” TV game shows.

Compiled by Ed Plowman.

There are so many essays and articles on the writers’ strike, and they’re mildly informative and mostly boring.  But this short essay from The New Yorker, “Why We Strike,” may be worth your time. 

We are not in this for the money. Management would have you believe that we all make $200,000 a year. That’s funny. We wouldn’t even eat something that cost $200,000, unless it was actually $200,000, drizzled with truffle oil, the way Silvio makes it. Yum. The only reason we require payment at all is so we can support those little people we keep telling you about-the assistants, amanuenses, baristas, Rolfers, scarf carriers, and erotic muses we need to create our art. Oh, and our babies. And various charities.

It is, after all, in the humor section.  And it’s written by a real writer.

I’m usually too busy to catch regular TV shows before they go into syndication. And with a busy family and movie tickets selling at nearly 10 bucks a pop, we don’t get to the multiplex much. That’s why I never dreamed that a strike among film and television writers would affect me.  But, alas, producers searching for a screenwriter for one of my books are now stymied by a Writers Guild of America strike.

Labor talks that began in July stalled, mainly over writers’ demands that they receive more compensation when their work is reproduced or distributed on the Web. Governor Ahnold has stepped in to help negotiate a settlement. Meanwhile, late-night talk shows are already in reruns, and most scripted comedies and dramas are expected to shut down by November.

Not a big deal for those of us who don’t catch much TV. But on a food-and-rent level, production crews and support staff — lots of them — are suddenly finding themselves out of work.

I know we have a lot of writers who blog here. Is the strike affecting you at all? And have you seen unfair use of your work on the Internet?

One Hollywood writer says the writers are about to go on strike, and it’s not because of a bad contract.  It’s because we, America, have let them down.  The Kingdom, Rendition, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, In the Valley of Elah, Redacted - political films all, and ones supposed to be relevant in the most precious way - are not doing so well at the box office.

It’s so sad: Here we were, on a roll, with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in command of Congress, the Clinton Restoration practically a fait accompli, and Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize to use as a doorstop alongside his Oscar - and this is the thanks we get.

Are Americans tired of politics on film, or are these just bad movies, or is there a difference between those two options?