I can't seem to manage to keep my Netflix queue from stagnating, but I have seen a couple of movies in the past few weeks.

The Notorious Bettie Page: The obvious observation (though it still startled me) is how incredibly tame all of this stuff was. I knew that pornography had gone through several iterations of harder- and harder- core in the past 50 years, but the idea that the U.S. Senate had gotten all exercised of some lady wearing a bathing suit with a ball in her mouth is really rather extraordinary. Parts of the movie didn't thrill me, but since those were indeed parts of Page's life, I suppose my quarrel is with the subject rather than her biographer.

Stick It: The number of Yale Law Students I know who went to go see this movie about cattiness among female gymnasts is rather extraordinary. It's by the makers of Bring it On (cattiness among female cheerleaders), but alas, is not as good. Too much time is spent building up the oh-so-obvious point when the main character will decide to stop screwing around and start applying herself, and then too much time is spent dwelling on the oh-so-clever twist at the national meet. So you could have improved the movie by shortening it to an hour, or else fleshing it out with more extraneous but unforgettable details like Bring It On did.