Meet the new and improved Golden Globe

We're going through a period of great change right now in America, and just because the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. -- the body that for 65 years has presented the Golden Globe Awards -- aren't from here doesn't mean they're not feeling the zeitgeist!

Just ask HFPA President Jorge Camara, who today unveiled the new Golden Globe Award statuette that winners will receive henceforth. At a press conference this morning in Hollywood, Camara and David W. Moritz, the chief executive of New York-based awards manufacturer Society Awards, reported that they had spent the last two years collaborating to finalize the design and production of the new awards.

The statuette that is being replaced has been presented to hundreds of winners since 1945, when the HFPA last switched looks. That year, they held a contest to try to find a design that would better reflect the overall aims of the organization. Somehow, the submission of then-HFPA President Marina Cisternas -- a golden globe encircled with a strip of film and mounted on a pedestal -- prevailed. (Nobody can say the folks at the HFPA have ever lacked gall!)

The new model features a globe with a filmstrip wrapped around it and the HFPA acronym on its base, all sitting atop a golden cup on a marble base. It weighs 5.5 lbs., stands 10.75 inches tall and sits on a 3.5-inch-wide base. The globe is plated in 24kt gold, the base is made of a "unique and uncommon" marble.

Camara reports that "improvements in the statuettes include the detail and symmetry of the metal portion, inherent quality of the casting method and accuracy of the globe." The construction of the awards -- as well as the custom cases that hold them, which are provided to recipients after their on-stage presentation --  also have gotten a makeover "so they will be more durable in transit." (So, in case you were worried that the Golden Globe winners were being denied a proper awards experience, worry no more.)

Moritz, for his part, stayed on script: "When the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. selected our company to produce its famous Golden Globe statuettes for the world's most prestigious awards show [emphasis mine], it immediately became the centerpiece of our accounts."

Maybe it's just me, but those sound like some fightin' words, Oscar!

The 66th annual Golden Globe Awards will air at 8 p.m. Sunday on NBC.

Photo credit: Matt Sayles / Associated Press