i was playing aroud with the new blender s version, 2.54 and the spot light is way better then the old spot of 2.49, take a look on this images, all the images was taken with a real time light settup, all the shadows are real, i used just one spot light for that result, there is a shadow on the wall that is a bake, this was a project that ive made before and i forgot to remove form that wall.
there are some bugs, i agree with that but i just mess around with it about 20 minutes, just try yourself too, maybe you achieve mutch better results.
Now we can make mutch more with this, i hope that the final blender version improve this spot light even more.1
Bloom or whatever effects you have are a bit heavy, but yeah, those shadows do look impressive.