I haven't found the reporting system yet that is that 'friendly'.
Record selection formula is whether you keep the record or skip it...it is a filter on the recordset, not how to get the records for the recordset.
CR doesn't support dynamic recordsets...the recordset that any report is going to use has to be defined at design time and is stored with the report (I suspect). Since a subreport is a complete report onto itself, you can't have 1 report set the dataset of the next report...CR doesn't write to anything. It reads data, once, and then acts on the data it read.
I am a little confused as to why you don't want to cut and paste, since you wold need to set the datasource for the subreport and would need to set up the variables for your dynamic selection...
I would think that it is the same amount of work.