Regarding login redirect urls

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/peters-login-redirect/
is an excellent plugin for that

or, depending on how you’re doing your login you can code it…

//ADD LOGIN LINK TO MENU
add_filter('wp_nav_menu_items', 'add_login_logout_link', 10, 2);

function add_login_logout_link($items, $args) {
	$voodooredir = htmlspecialchars($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
	$loginoutlink = wp_loginout($voodooredir, false);
	$items .= '<li>'. $loginoutlink .'</li>';
	return $items;
}

I use this to put a login in my menu, which redirects to whatever page the user logged in from

If you just want to build a login url that redirects to a specific page after successful login:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_login_url

Or if you want to play with action hooks on login:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Action_Reference/wp_login