You want a malleable film that is capable of relatively high contrast, but with a curve that doesn't get bent out of shape doing that. TMax films do that, with TMY100 being originally engineered as a good color separation film, replacing Super XX. Ilford's best product for that is FP4, like I already noted. Working the other way around, using a very high contrast graphics film, and trying to tame it in a darkroom (versus stochastic image setter devices) is a questionable proposition, although numerous people go that route due to budgetary reasons and the fact they aren't necessarily interested in realistic results, and are fine with unpredictable funky. Whatever.
Don't believe everything you hear. Sure, you might be able to kill a charging rhinoceros with a shovel; but what are the statistical odds? Of course, I hope you have fun doing this, and don't mind some bumps and bruises along the way. But just how frustrated do you want to get? It's a lot easier to get from Point A to B with the correct film in the first place than trying to beat just any pan film into submission. A lot of work goes into calibrating your protocol; and you'd have to start all over again each tine you switch to another film. And once you move up to 8x10, false starts add up expensively.
RA4 papers are their own topic. And no, you're not likely to get a "Kodachrome look" without significant equipment and materials investment. What kind of color enlarger do you have? It would have to be made pin-register compatible if you plan on doing sequential additive printing using a set of in-camera RGB separations for enlargement purposes. I calibrated everything and set up to do that using 8X10 TMX100 a couple years ago, but never found the right subject matter or pause in the wind. It would be different if I still had a place in the mountains; but it's windy most of the year here on the coast; and I haven't been able to make any serious desert trips during our very high gas prices, which are only now tapering off. But I did get some RA4 printing done from 8X10 chromes via precision Portra 160 internegs, and of course directly from color neg originals.
Nothing is going to look like a dye transfer print except another dye transfer print. For all practical purposes, it's an extinct process except for a handful of people still with the necessary supplies. Color Carbro would be a nightmare to resurrect; but color carbon is realistic, along with gum, casein, etc. I might or might not have enough DT supplies for about 5 years of printing, barely enough for the learning curve itself, beyond my preliminary revisionary experiments. But I have had old dye transfer pros amazed at what can be done optimizing color neg film exposure itself, and taking the pains to truly optimize chromogenic printing technique. But I had a long background in high-level Cibachrome, and all kinds of specialized equipment already. It can be done, and done superbly in a darkroom. The digital printing crowd rarely gets there because they think they can just post-tweak anything as they wish; and they can't. One has to really understand specific films and specific papers first. That's half the battle.
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