I wish I could say something positive, but I really do not like anything about it. I do not like the quasi-Firefox button at the top. I do not like the redesign of the volume control, or how the fullscreen button is now to the right of it, a la web media players. I really do not like the new position of the play button, in the middle of the forward and backward buttons. Neither do I like the new "smoothed out" look of the buttons. In general, I would say that most of the changes I see seem to be directed at making VLC look like every other media player out there, when people who love VLC for being unique really do not want that.
If this model is used, I will not use version 2.0 of VLC.
Looking closely, what I do like about this is the title line above the progress slider. We also need a way to put subtitles in the black space under the movie, and not in within the film area itself. Thanks for your hard work.