Dynamics is my weak area too,but for that stuff I have seen that a waving flag effect is pretty easily done by making the surface into a soft body and add turbulence and/or gravity to it.(i usually play with those settings located in the atribute editor (contrl+A)
About how all this is done, I shouldn't be the right person to give advice, but that's one of the ways I have seen some people doing it.

About the spirally motion though, I have no clue , Maybe using some sort of motion path through a spiral curve? let's wait for someone else to give some more useful feedback i am in doubt too...