People seem to really dislike frameworks and I know they can be more trouble then they are worth at times but I really like TurboGears. It's python based, sits on top of CherryPy (webserver) and you can take as much or as little as you need. It has a great philosophy of pulling in all thats good from all over the python world and loosely coupling it together in to a framework. It's not perfect by an means but it's a lot better then inventing that wheel again!