Well if your talking about getting the last modified from on the same server, well thats a simple task. PHP has a nice little function for that...
$timestamp = filemtime("filename");
Of course you'd have to use the date() of gmdate() functions to format this for human viewing but thats a simple task.
echo date ("M d Y H:i:s", $timestamp);
echo gmdate ("M d Y H:i:s", $timestamp);
~output~
Sep 07 2000 23:10:32
Sep 08 2000 06:10:32
The date() function returns the time using the local settings where as the gmdate() funcion returns the time using the internet standard Greenwich Mean Time which if you were sending the last modified value in a header would be what you'd want to use.