How to create an animated texture?

My basic issue is that im trying to do a little bit of special effects, and im doing this by having a plane playing the movie i recorded while the meshes look cool in front of it.

  1. Is there a better way to do special effects in blender?
  2. How do I make the texture of the plane play a movie as the scene plays?

By the way, im using the cycles engine

And a final big note: I do NOT want to do any sort of compositing.