You're right about SMG, I think it will have great legs and the race with Halo 3 isn't over yet.
For the next Mario game, I would give it to another team to do another one for the Wii. Not a bad team of course, but one that hasn't done a Mario yet, like Retro. Expectations would be very different for that game, and the next Miyamoto-Mario would not have to live up to Galaxy directly.
I had to read it in school when I was only 14... I did only read the first few pages I think, it was just too complicated back then. The teacher made a mistake reading it with us imo. But we also watched parts of the film and it really looked interesting, I might read it once my matura is over.







