For question 2 all you need to do is go into the place2dTexture node and click on the mirror U and mirror V check boxes then put the amount of repetitions in the Repeat UV area.

For question 1 I haven't really done much in that area but I guess you would want a transparent plane with the movie sequence of firing mapped to it's color channel or I guess you could rig something up with dynamics.

I beleive the sequence mapping is done by using the frame extension on the file node of which you then put the extension numbers on the end of your texture files e.g. Fire001.jpg Fire002.jpg Fire003.jpg I'm not really too sure on the specifics.

Adam