I apologize in advance if this has been asked before... When I'm looking at other sites PR conerning backlinks, should I be looking at the their homepage PR or the actual page's PR where the link will appear?
What you should keep in mind is that visual PR only updates a few times a year. So the PR you see might be out of date. So if i make a new blog post on my PR6 blog it will show PR0 until the next update even though it will soon become PR5 for example.
different opinions here - to get better PR go for the actual page if it is a site with high pr or potential then the actual page don't matter because on the next g update it is likely you will benefit or probably even sooner. .