I was recently doing a large advertising shoot along side a film crew shooting three 30 second commercials for the same client (My job was to shoot the same scenes/subjects for use in the print and billboard campaigns). During the pre-production meeting I was thrilled to find out that the DP was shooting super 16mm film and not video as I had assumed would be the case. As the shoot wound down, we had a chance to chat about the whole film vs. digital thing, so I asked the inevitable question "So why film over video"? His answer was that the post production for digital video is not there yet and [surprise, surprise] film just works and works well! He went on to say that on a typical project you might save $20k on the front end by shooting video instead of film, but you wind up spending at least $30k on the back end for all the post production that must be done with video. Plus the turnaround for the client would be longer. The bottom line is that the MP industry has the film based process down to a science with very predictable results. Let's face it, the motion picture industry is about making money and as long as the current system isn't broke. They have no incentive to "fix it". It's just too bad that the editorial and commercial photography markets don't see it the same way. BTW, I was shooting 2 1/4 chrome as well as digital on that shoot. Thankfully, there are still a few clients out there that actually allow the photographer to choose the right tool for the right job.
-Mark