Hasn't this debate already been done to death all over the internet without any clear "winner"?
Well, here are some of my thoughts anyway.....
For astrophotography it seems that digital has obvious advantages.
For most normal photography I use 35mm Fuji Velvia 50, and scan the film at 22MP (with minimal grain showing) and then get any enlargements from there. It costs me 55cents/picture for the film and developing. I don't think that's expensive at all when factoring in the cost of enlargements, framing, the equipment and the time and effort taken to get the shot.
Velvia 50 is a fantastic slide film with great colour and fine grain, but it is not going to be available next year, but it's replacement Velvia 100 is already available (-Fuji still develop new types of film) which is said to be finer grain, more colour accurate and obviously faster. I'd put 35mm Velvia up against any 12MP (and probably more) DSLR with great confidence of producing an image superior in every way.
Just yesterday I was looking at a photo I took in 1997 on Kodak Gold 400 print film. I've since had it blown up to 30" x 20", framed it and sold it. On close inspection there is a bit of grain showing, but not much, and totally invisible from a normal viewing distance. The overall image quality was quite good and I’ve had an offer from someone that wants to buy an identical one. Gold 400 is a bad film that doesn't compare to any pro film, but it still produced acceptable results at this large size. It would take a pretty reasonable DSLR to produce that size image.
From my experience of scanning negatives and slides I think average print films like Kodak Gold 100 and Kodak High Definition 200 will match entry level DSLR's with ease. I've done enlargements from a number of different film types without grain showing.
My next camera will be a Nikon D200 (10MP) when they become available at the end of the year. I don't expect it to out do good film under normal conditions, (it’ll be close) but I do expect it to be better than film at high ISO. It's faster focussing than my current camera and does more FPS, that's why I'm getting one for action and low light shots and also for astrophoto's.
One of the main limiting factors on any camera is the quality of lens being used. Lots of people seem to focus more on buying the expensive camera body and then not buying a decent lens for it. Too often I see people with a great camera body only to attach a cheap and nasty zoom lens on the front of it. It doesn't matter whether you've got a film or digital camera then, the pictures will suffer.
Before someone jumps in and says "all the pro's use DSLR's", which is fairly true apart from a few magazine sports photographers etc, I must say that all serious landscape photography is done on at least medium format or bigger. Virtually the only professional use for DSLR's (what 35mm was used for) is for newspapers and magazines where quality and making enlargements isn't a major concern. There isn't any DSLR that rival’s large or even medium format, and if you’re serious that's what you'll use. Some photography magazines accept nothing less than medium format for publishing; no digital camera is up to their standard yet. I'll move on to medium format when my skill level makes it worthwhile.
Film is not about to die, especially medium and large format. The proof in that is totally obsolete movie film such as Kodachrome Super 8 is still being made, so I'd reckon 35mm will be around for many years to come.
This is just my opinion from experience I’ve had from working with film. I’d suggest everybody make up their own mind on which format suits their needs. Also be careful of some of the so called tests and comparisons on the net, some of them are pretty bad, especially the ones sponsored by digital camera shops!