I can't help with mounting a TV, I don't have experience with that.

Optimal speaker placement depends a lot on what kind of room you have, where you are sitting, and how optimally you plan on placing them at a cost of how your room appears, and how much space is OK to compromise (Not to mention, the kind of speakers you've got).

Smaller speakers are easier to place, but tend to sound quite a bit worse than full size speakers (See Bose Acoustimass et al). The best balance is typically medium to medium large bookshelf speakers on stands. Larger brackets can be suitable for smaller bookshelf speakers, but due to placement of them, this can hurt sound quality. Brackets are usually the best solution for the really small speakers, as they are not usually ported.

So, here are the rudimentary things of importance:

Speakers should be roughly ear level - if you have a large tower type speaker, optimally, you want ear level to be right between the tweeter and midrange driver.

The center speaker should be in line with the TV, preferably at about the same height as the left/right speakers. Do not put the center speaker behind something that will affect the sound. Do not put it significantly higher or lower than the other speakers, this will be disconcerting!

In a 5 speaker setup, the surround speakers are surrounds, NOT rears! They go directly to the left and right of the seating position, or maybe *slightly* behind. Placement of surrounds can be difficult, though it is not as important to have quality surround speakers as it is to have quality center, L/R, or sub. Some companies make dipolar surround speakers such as the ones linked below which create a more diffuse sound. They are best for situations where optimal placement is not possible. Note that it is perfectly OK for surround speakers to be quite close to the listeners! Once you get everything hooked up, you need to get everything balanced properly with settings on your receiver. This is worthy of another question with a tip in and of itself...

example of good, smallish surround speakers:
http://www.axiomaudio.com/qs4.html

Speakers like that could go on the wall behind and above the listeners and work OK. At my place, for example, we have a normal pair of bookshelf speakers on stands directly to the left and right of the 3 seat sofa (which is the only seating in our living room).

6 speaker setups include 2 surrounds (directly left and right of the listeners!), and one rear center speaker. 7 speaker setups forsake the center rear for a left and right rear, so the listeners have speakers in front, beside, and behind them. 8 channel audio adds the rear center back in again. In most rooms, the gains in sound from over 5 channels is not proportional to the budget needed to support them. You're better off buying less better speakers.

The sub is very sensitive to placement. If you have some garbage Bose speakers with the "bass module", you will want to keep the sub in front, near the main speakers, because the "bass module" emits some fairly high tones, and hearing a muddy sound coming loudly from the bass module behind you while Darth Vader talks in front of you is going to be disconcerting. If you have speakers of a reasonable size that your bass crossover is in the 40-80hz range, however, optimal placement of a sub can be anywhere in the room! Due to the different means of construction, furniture, and exact distances involved for sound waves to bounce, optimal subwoofer placement comes down to experimentation. Generally speaking, each "wall" surface, be it the floor or side walls will give a modest boost to the sound when the sub is placed by them. If you have a smaller subwoofer, the best placement is usually in a corner - this will provide the biggest boost to the sound so you can keep the gain lower, and the sub will be able to play loudly without distortion. However, the specific makeup of the room will cause there to be nodal areas where there is a LOT of bass, or where there is very little bass! So, if you encounter this at your listening position, you are best off moving the sub to as many convenient places as possible in order to find out where it sounds the best. Yes, this is tedious, and some high end equipment will self adjust for this, too, but we can't help you with that without knowing what you've got.

Main speaker placement isn't too difficult, but here are some guidelines: again, speakers should be roughly at ear level. If you've got smaller speakers on brackets, angle them so they point to ear level. From the main listening position, the main speakers should have approximately a 45-60 degree angle, pointing directly at the primary listening position. For a wider room, point the speakers straight ahead or only toe them in slightly - excessive toe-in hurts the sound for the people sitting on the outside of the seating area.

This is advice for all speakers:
Ported, non-subwoofer speakers need to be placed carefully around walls. If you have rear ported speakers, mounting them on a wall will cause sound to be poor, as the ports need some space to expel air. In general, rear ported speakers should be placed so that there is no wall within 2-3' (yes, feet) of them for the best sound possible. If you care about appearance more than sound, feel free to put them close to the wall - but if you care about both and it is a problem, be sure to get speakers that are not ported, or have the ports in the front - front ports are a very common design with tower speakers, but are less common with bookshelf models. This is not as much of an issue with tiny speakers because they don't do much in the frequency range where this becomes a major issue.

Well, there's some basic info to question #2. Hopefully it's of use. If you have specific questions about your own room, if you could provide a rough sketch with some reasonable measurements, I'd be happy to give you some more specific advice.

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