pymat doesnt seem to work with current versions of matlab, so I was wondering if there is another equivalent out there (I havent been able to find one). The gist of what would be desirable is running an m-file from python (2.6). (and alternatives such as scipy dont fit since I dont think they can run everything from the m-file). 
Thanks in advance!
You can always start matlab as separate subprocess and collect results via std.out/files. (see subprocess package).
Running m-files from Python