Have you tried more photorealistic settings in Photomatix?
Brad, I won't speak for the OP, but I have tried virtually every setting imaginable in Photomatix and keep coming back to the "over the top" look. I jst find that the "photo realistic" settings make for an image that looks not quite right to me. The gritty, painterly, surreal, or whatever you want to call it look makes sure (for me) that there is no ambiguity in what I was attempting to convey.
There is/was a thread somewhere on the forum about "do you hate HDR?" I think most people look at the results from someone trying to extend dynamic range while maintaining a phot realistic look and know that it just does not look right. By tonemapping multiple times and using setting that are not intended for photo, you change the image to something that suggests a photo, but has more to it than that.
In my project (still in progress, you can see it here
http://gallery.me.com/joebehar) the idea was to make everything a facade...the subjects are obviously building facades, my opinion of the various intitutions pictured is that they are a facade, the post processing of the images is done so that its a facade, and to top it all off I try to do most of the images with my G9, which a lot of people consider to not be a "real" camera (yet anothe facade aspect)
I'm hijacking this thread thoug, so I'll stop there