Re: latest editing trends

I think what you're seeing is the fact that editors of a certain youthful age have been highly influenced by Japanese manga, anime, and American graphic novels in their design sense. The multi-angle shots in anime' themselves I believe devolve from Kabuki theatre techniques, where, to heighten a dramatic moment, the scene is frozen in tableau, so you can take your time and let your eyes wander all over the scene.

The multi-angle, multi-window is the Tv frame imitating a comic book frame, though comic book frame formats derived themselves from graphic artists' interpretations of the fast cutting style of TV. So the whole thing is an Orubouros in a sense. It imitates something that is imitating the original imitation.

Also, modern NLE gear makes these techniques childishly simple to play with and use, whereas us olde fartes would have had to do quite a bit of work-roll building and other layering to get the same effect. And film cutters before that, well, they had to justify some high expenses for optical printer work to get that effect, so it wasn't popular before, because it was hard and expensive, not because it wasn't a good idea sometimes.