f = open("filename", "rb").
.
f.close()
From this example:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4971413/how-to-read-a-binary-file
This was part of a larger search where I was working on pulling values out of a (packet, obviously) binary file. The horrific answer was to read bytes from the file into a "string", then bust out each 8-bit (or other size) value as an integer. So what I ended up doing was reading in 6 "characters", yanking out the packet size from this primary header, and then using that value to read in another "string" of that many characters + 1.
Here is one example site, in which the read() command is used and the result is cast to different sizes of integers:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1163459/reading-integers-from-binary-file-in-python
Here is another example where bytes are read in one or chunksize at a time with a loop:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1035340/reading-binary-file-in-python
