I've already used that package of patches. The TrueMotion codec fixed my upside-down problem, but they were still going blazing fast (just the picture). In case this is a codec-related problem, I'm going to give that K-Lite thing a try, and see if it does anything.

I do have dziugo's patch that lets me skip cutscenes, but I can't skip the observatory scene because, like the Gondola scene, it involves text, and skipping it (or in my current case, finishing the video too quickly) will cause Cloud to become "lost".
I'm trying out K-Lite codec pack, and so far, it's letting me play the movie files outside of the game at normal speed, but gives me a black screen as soon as I run the game (since there's a scene with the EIDOS logo), and my whole system stops responding. Reinstalling TrueMotion codec and then disabling TrueMotion handling in ffdshow configs allowed it to work, but I'm back to the original problem...which is super-fast FMV's.