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Ok, so I was watching this crummy movie ("Arkhangel" with Daniel Craig -- think DaVinci Code set in Russia) and there's one scene where Beria's looking at Stalin on his deathbed. Stalin suddenly comes to, and Beria says "Ты живой!" It seems to me like you'd use the short form here though, right (Ты жив!)? Живой should only be used to describe something like this: You have a pet snake, and you feed him live mice, not dead ones -- so you'd say живая мышь?
I think you can use the long form to describe people, not necessarily only the short form.
Ты - молодой
Я - красивая
он - несчастный
"Живой" means "alive" (not dead) as well as "living" (living creature). So no mistakes were there. Also if Beria would say "Ты жив?" it might mean that Staling has been missing for a long time so everybody started to think that he is never to return and maybe died already but he suddenly appeared and amazed Beria. So if "ты жив?" may contain such a long context it's safer to say "ты живой?". At least it has more straight meaning. But anyway "ты жив" and "ты живой" are completely interchangable. That contextual difference I pictured is very small.
Why not posting in grammar section? :)