I think all the current actions are going to be getting new animations in 1.21? I have to look around for the info again.

On the 2nd point, I think at launch we couldn't use moves until animations finished playing out and it was super annoying and slowed things down a lot. Being able to cancel animations does speed things up and you could just wait for your animations to finish if it bugs you that much. I don't watch others fighting unless they want to show me their cool new WS or their damage so how others look doesn't bother me =P