The manual should say how to open up inside a directory.. simply append / to the path (so "/foo/bar/" to be inside /foo/bar instead of having bar selected).
No, you cant set pitch/speed to shortcuts, though I would guess that is a simple addition (well, they really should be proper settings which always reset to 100% on boot).
and no to selecting anything but the first item in a directory (though you can select specific ones if you know the filename anyway)