Instead of displaying c:\docs\videos\action\mission impossible.avi for example just have it display the videos name alone in this case just show mission impossible.avi.
Some skins use a playtree to display the information; this is the name folder and/or file. VLC 0.9.0, which is the upcoming version, will work the way you want it to. It will first display the meta information, and if none is available it will then display the file name.
Also on the player interface show remaining time and time elapsed.
Version 0.9.0 will do this as well. I forget which ones, but there are some skins that can do this currently. One of them I can think of is Airflow. Try some others here:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/skins.php
One more thing when you clik view playlist have it "connected" to the main interface instead of being a separate window. I like how it does this in the MAC version.
I haven't used skins mode in a while so don't know which skins have this. I do know that in the wxWidgets interface you can change this by going to: Preferences > Interface > Main interfaces > wxWidgets. Where it says "Playlist View" click on the drop-down box and select "Embedded".