The Homebase!

JAY-Z ENDORSES BARACK OBAMA Saturday, Oct. 4, @ Cobo Arena, Detroit, MI. The crowd was about 10,000 people. Tickets were free, mostly secured from Obama campaign offices throughout the Metro area. T-shirt vendors were perched outside the venue, hawking Obama shirts and more. The show was set up to raise awareness for voter registration- the deadline being Monday, October 6. Local radio personalities hosted the introductory segment- an African-American Iraq veteran leads the pedge of allegiance; local singer and Oprah Winfrey Show-singing-contest winner Lashell Griffin sang the Star Spangled Banner; a judge running for michigan's supreme court said some brief remarks; finally a trio of Obama campaign workers urged the audience to engage their friends and family members to be registered and to vote on November 4th. Finally the main event: wearing a T-shirt, jeans, gymshoes and a NY Yankees cap, Jay-Z took the stage around 9:30, and did an hour-long set, no guest performers, just Shaw

LEE FILM HIGHLIGHTS FORGOTTEN SOLDIERS Miracle at St. Anna is the latest film from director Spike Lee . It is his first war movie, and arguably only the second action-based thriller after 2007’s Inside Man . The WWII period film actually opens in the early 80’s: A post-office clerk (Laz Alonso) abruptly shoots a customer with a vintage military pistol. An ensuing police investigation finds an Italian stone bust worth millions in the suspect’s apartment. A rookie reporter (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) prods him about it, and the main narrative begins: in 1944, four black men, members of the 92nd Infantry "Buffalo Soldiers" fight their way behind enemy lines in Axis-controlled Italy. They include the towering Train (Omar Benson Miller), level-headed Stamps (Derek Luke), preacher turned apostate Bishop (Michael Ealy), and Afro-Latin/de facto translator Hector (Alonso). Train obsessively carries the aforementioned bust, retrieved from a previous battle. The quartet manages to