You can always open the avi in a compositor, like after effects, and have it save the avi in a sequence of iff. Then in maya, make your plane, and apply a lambert material to it. Then in the attributes of the shader you just made, click on the colour and map a file node to it. Then open your first file of the sequence of iff.
then tick the box where it says use frame extension,
Then right click on the frame extension, and add a expression like this
file1.frameExtension = time * 24;
this will play your sequence of iff files, one at every frame. As long as your scene is set to 24 frames a second.
Well thats should work. im sure theres a easyer way. but it does the trick.
There's nothing normal about normals. In FACT i think the are abnormal.