Very interesting thread.
I really really like the shot, it's spot on, and a fine one, great stuff. A few points that I will take up.
I have a load of respect for photographers such as Joseph Holmes, excellent photographer..and I enjoy looking at his work. If he feels digital MF is the way to go for his work, then I won't argue with that. We all make choices..it's personal taste.
Neither will I deny I am a bit of a film fan myself, I have started to move over to film for some types of work (landscape/people etc), still use digital for some tasks, in particular digital is a very good tool for low light high ISO work. I am looking into a MF film system, for now I am mostly 35mm based.
Lots of folks say you can photoshop the film look, add the grain (I agree no grain mono portraits don't look right to me). But the reality of using film and digital (and I won't deny I am not using top end bodies), is that I "prefer" the look of film, colour and b&w. The OP is right about highlights, neg film does a fantastic job in this area, it clings onto them very well, while your digital will blow out a lot sooner. I am more an Ilford shooter myself, and I did once try to get the HP5 look in pp, but it's simply easier to shoot the real stuff! You can add the grain..spend ages messing about in post processing..meantime you have it there and ready to go with film. I find my pp workload greatly reduced using film..once you get a grasp of the scanning side of things, it's much easier and faster to get results that are good.
Skintones, again..I have a hard time getting the results I like with digital, pick a decent film..and you have a job to not get them nice!
Exposure, as said the highlight range is excellent, if I want fire and forget tough conditions, I load a roll of FP4 and it's near bulletproof, over or underexposed. People band about these DxO DR numbers..but shoot some of that and discover how it almost renders spot metering ineffective, really..the latitude is that good on it. I'll believe the DR of digital is great when I don't blow highlights out very often..it's ok at times, not so good for difficult contrasty conditions
The look, is completely different with film to digital, colour and mono. Scanned film printed does not look like digital, not at all. That is why people scan film too, though few would disagree for b&w wet printing is the way to go. Film just looks nicer to my eyes, colour and mono.
In closing, to me..people should simply use what they like. But I greatly enjoy film, and I have now gone to a 70% film 30% digital ratio roughly..a year ago it was 95% digital. After only a few rolls of film, and some work on getting up to speed with scanning.and having the concern about non instant feedback, I have overcome that, and dare I say..even get a kick out of having to wait a bit, like xmas for every roll ;-)
Digital is the equivalent of an electric shave, handy..convenient..and decent enough in many cases. Film is a wet shave..ultimately more satisfying in the final result ;-)